There are welcome signs, of which this recording is one, that Britten's Cello Symphony is being taken up by several outstanding young cellists. It has perhaps suffered from being indelibly associated with the mighty Rostropovich, though he has not often played it in recent years—his performance of its formidable difficulties is enough to awe any would-be subsequent interpreter, as his Decca recording with Britten exemplifies. That Culshaw recording, superb in sound and balance, will forever remain the touchstone by which all others should be judged. This Wallfisch/Bedford collaboration with the ECO (as on the composer's recording), matches up remarkably well. Wallfisch finds an extra tenderness in the meditative passages and Bedford is more expansive than the composer in the finale, if at some slight detriment to the cohesiveness of the movement's structure. It is music that is perhaps less immediately accessible than much of Britten, but once one has found the key to its secrets it reveals itself, in my opinion, as one of his most profound and searing masterpieces. That is how the performers on this new recording present it, and the Chandos engineers have given them a spacious and warm recording.
The record has the extra attraction of Steuart Bedford's suite from Death in Venice, undertaken with Sir Peter Pears's encouragement. The extra-ordinary atmosphere of Britten's last opera, its bell-haunted sonorities and emotional tensions, are faithfully captured in the suite's 27-minute span. If some of the invention sounds distinctly thin without the voices and the stage picture, this certainly does not apply to the great final scene. The ECO's playing is magnificent. An outstanding issue.'