As one might expect from so characterful an artist as Steven Isserlis, this is a cello recital with a difference, attractive in a delightfully offbeat way. The last and longest item, Inner World by the Australian Carl Vine, for amplified cello with electronic support, could easily become a cult piece. Starting like a cadenza for some romantic cello concerto, it grows ever more elaborate, always tonal and lyrical, with the soloist in duet with himself at times, culminating in a wild, exciting coda.
You might regard that as the most controversial item, but for a very wide audience it could be a winner. Otherwise, there are only two regular cello showpieces, Saint-Saens’s “The Swan” exquisitely done with a final whispered half-tone (in a recording evidently taken from the television series with Michael Tilson Thomas and Dudley Moore) and Popper’s Dance of the Elves, as flamboyant as you will ever hear it.
It may seem gimmicky that the opening item, the Beethoven Variations, transcribed from a Sonatina for mandolin and piano (1796), should here have anachronistic harpsichord accompaniment. Yet as a performance it certainly works, with exhilarating pointing of the final syncopated variation. Most of Isserlis’s transcriptions are from violin originals, including the comic Leonard piece, full of ever more exaggerated hee-haws, set against the carter’s song in the middle. The Faure Morceau de concours is an exception, transcribed from a flute piece.
In all those items Thomas Ades is an inspired accompanist, specially relishing the witty 1920s parodies in Matyas Seiber’s Dance Suite, including one delectable glissando near the end. The Cuban cross-rhythms of the jolly pizzicato piece by the Georgian, Sulkhan Tsintsadze, are also wittily pointed by both artists. Other oddities include the jolly little Martinu Duo (with Isserlis taking both parts), and the unlikely Nocturne et Scherzo, in fact a little waltz, which Debussy wrote in an anonymous style in Russia in 1882. It is here much faster and more robust than with Rostropovich, whose recording of the first performance in 1968 is included in “The Russian Recordings” box from EMI. It is good too to have Isserlis’s tribute to his grandfather, the pianist Julius Isserlis, in a nostalgic folk-based Russian piece.
The two items with Felicity Lott bring extra freshness and beauty, not just the Berlioz song but the Tavener piece with accompaniment for cello alone. With first-rate sound this is going to give great pleasure to Isserlis’s many admirers.'