Following the solo cello’s emotional declaration at the opening of Elgar’s Concerto, the violas begin a quietly doleful, lilting tune that’s passed off to the orchestral cellos before the soloist gingerly picks it up pianissimo. Here, however, Gabriel Schwabe re-enters at a confident mezzo-forte – more or less the same volume he uses a little later on (at 2'34") when Elgar specifically asks for a mezzo-forte. His playing is eloquently expressive, mind you, but I find myself disconcerted nonetheless. I’m also somewhat unsettled in the first minute or so of the scherzo-like Allegro molto, where his approach strikes me as more neurotic than playful. But as the movement unfolds, he seems to lighten up, both in tone and character, and there are some wonderful details – the Falstaffian swoop at 2'18", for instance. And from there the performance goes from strength to strength, with a nobly sung yet invitingly confidential reading of the Adagio and a swashbuckling finale. I only wish Schwabe’s tone conveyed more pain in the slow section (at 6'13") before the coda, where I believe Elgar intended a lyrical cry of anguish.

Schwabe’s reticence is particularly perplexing given that he plays Bridge’s Oration with such burning intensity, vividly capturing the work’s agonised character. Listen to his plangent tone at 2'50" in the opening section (track 5), or to the sense of longing he brings to the tranquillo passage at 3'29" in track 6. And there’s real menace in the militaristic rhythms of the central Allegro giusto (track 8), where Christopher Ward elicits aptly strident playing from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Here and there a few details are smudged – the cellos’ and double basses’ pizzicatos just before the Epilogue are out of sync, for example – and in slower, quieter music, Ward’s grip can feel a little loose. As a result, this interpretation doesn’t quite have the inexorable sweep of Steven Isserlis’s gorgeous yet hard-hitting recording with Hugh Wolff and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (BIS, 5/13). That said, Schwabe’s incendiary performance demands to be heard, and in his impassioned rhetoric he makes a compelling case for the importance of Bridge’s title in coming to an understanding of this deeply moving score.