This most accomplished, enterprising concert is performed with consistent sensitivity and much quiet insight. Perhaps the highlight is Edmund Rubbra’s gloriously ruminative and beautifully crafted Cello Sonata of 1946, here given a reading which strikes a perfect balance between formal elegance and gentle passion. In the Britten Sonata, Timothy Gill and his pianist Fali Pavri adopt a more restrained, less commandingly articulate approach than either Rostropovich and the composer on Decca (still peerlessly eloquent and sounding superbly full-bodied 35 years on) or Moray Welsh and John Lenehan (who form an impressive partnership on EMI – part of that company’s somewhat variable Anglo-American Chamber Music Series). That said, these gifted young artists undoubtedly have the full measure of this work’s considerable technical demands, and their playing exhibits unfailing musicality and dedication. I enjoyed the vigour of their “Marcia” and “Moto perpetuo”, yet, by the side of the characterful, extraordinarily flexible Rostropovich/Britten account, the opening “Dialogo” inevitably sounds a little lacking in sheer concentration and crackling intensity (no disgrace in that, of course).
The new disc also contains two offerings by the Calcutta-born figure, John Mayer (a composition pupil of Matyas Seiber). Prabhanda for cello and piano dates from 1982. It is an approachable piece in eight movements which manages to combine Indian and Western musical elements to colourful and emotionally diverse effect (the title is an ancient Indian musical form not dissimilar to our own Suite). Gill and Pavri lend exemplary advocacy to this attractive creation. Inspired by “the incredibly contrasting sights and sounds” (to quote the excellent, uncredited booklet-notes) of Mayer’s home city, the suite for solo piano from 1993 entitled Calcutta-Nagar (“City of Calcutta”) consists of 18 vignettes, most of them pithy in the extreme, yet all exquisitely chiselled and often highly evocative: try the soothing “Kali Temple” (track 29) or bustling “Hooghley River” (track 30). Suffice to report, the composer’s fellow countryman, Fali Pavri, is an outstandingly sympathetic interpreter.
Sound and balance are good, although in the Britten Sonata especially, there were times when I craved a rather sharper focus. Background traffic rumble also intrudes from time to time, but not enough to spoil this particular listener’s pleasure.'