Steven Isserlis - reVisions

Information

Composer: Claude Debussy; Maurice Ravel; Sergei Prokofiev; Ernest Bloch

• (01-05) Debussy - Suite pour Violoncelle et Orchestre (arr. Sally Beamish)
• (06-07) Ravel - Deux mélodies hébraïques (arr. Richard Tognetti)
• (08-10) Prokofiev - Concertino for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 132
• (11-13) Bloch - From Jewish Life (arr. Christopher Palmer)

Steven Isserlis, cello
Tapiola Sinfonietta
Gábor Takács-Nagy, conductor

Date: 2010
Label: BIS
http://bis.se/performers/isserlis-steven/steven-isserlis-revisions

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

Sally Beamish’s Debussy arrangement is the highlight on Isserlis’s latest offering

The cynic might surmise that this is the sort of disc that a cellist produces when he has exhausted important cello literature, but it is more than that. Steven Isserlis expounds his reasoning in a booklet-note, and Sally Beamish’s realisation – or re-imagining – of a putative Debussy suite is a delight. This is, in a sense, Debussy before he became Debussy, a sequence of salon pieces composed in advance of his maturity and his espousal of musical Impressionism. Beamish has taken an early Intermezzo and a Scherzo that are known to have been written for cello, and has supplemented them with arrangements for cello and orchestra of a Rêverie and Danse bohémienne, originally for piano solo, and with a transcription of a song that takes the place of a Nocturne that Debussy is presumed to have intended to or, maybe, did write. Beamish’s orchestration, as reproduced by the Tapiola Sinfonietta under Gábor Takács-Nagy, is lucid and deft, and the piece has allure.

Ravel’s Deux Mélodies hébraïques, conceived for soprano, are heard in arrangements for cello and orchestra by Richard Tognetti, and Bloch’s From Jewish Life is given evocative orchestral guise by Christopher Palmer. Prokofiev’s Concertino, Op 132, one of the late works that he left unfinished, is here a hybrid of Rostropovich’s completion and a scoring by Vladimir Blok, with a further change to the end of the first movement. Far limper than the Symphony-Concerto, the Concertino nevertheless exudes, in parts, some of the piquancy of Prokofiev in his prime.

-- Geoffrey Norris, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2010/Nov10/revisions_BISSACD1782.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/15/steven-isserlis-revisions-review
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/reviews/album-steven-isserlis-revisions-bis-2053391.html
https://www.ft.com/content/c63507e2-b4cf-11df-b0a6-00144feabdc0
https://www.allmusic.com/album/revisions-mw0002031909

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steven Isserlis (born 19 December 1958 in London) is a British cellist. At the age of 14, he moved to Scotland to study under the tutelage of Jane Cowan. From 1976 to 1978 he studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Richard Kapuscinski. Isserlis is distinguished for his diverse repertoire, distinctive sound deployed with his use of gut strings and command of phrasing, and is a staunch advocate of lesser-known composers. Isserlis plays the De Munck Stradivarius, on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation. He also part-owns a Montagnana cello from 1740 and a Guadagnini cello of 1745.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Isserlis

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!