Born in Amsterdam in 1994, educated at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the recipient of a clutch of musical prizes, Ella van Poucke has opted to record Schumann’s cello works for her first recording. It’s a bold choice that pits her disc against recent versions of the same repertoire by Gautier Capuçon, Sol Gabetta, Gabriel Schwabe and Jean-Guihen Queyras, not to mention older recordings by Mischa Maisky and Heinrich Schiff. On the evidence of this recording, however, it’s also one that plays to her strengths, in particular a strong feel for Schumann’s Romantic sensibility.

In the Concerto, van Poucke’s performance is distinguished by its spontaneity and delicacy, her playing of the double-stopped passages in the slow movement especially affecting. The accompaniment by the Phíon orchestra (created in 2019 from a merger of Het Gelders Orkest and the Orkest van het Oosten) under Günter Neuhold is also very persuasive, concluding with a wonderfully airborne and zestful account of the finale. In the three chamber works, which precede the concerto on the album, van Poucke is joined by her regular recital partner, the Belgian pianist Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. Here, the passion and impetuosity of the more animated pieces are strongly projected and the melancholy of the first of the Op 73 set and the third of the Fünf Stücke im Volkston leaves a strong impression.

One aspect of the album that’s not totally ideal, however, is the close-focus recording of the cello in the chamber works, which picks up a great deal more of the soloist’s breathing than in the concerto. Nevertheless, this is an impressive debut album from a soloist whose performances I look forward to hearing more of in the future.