Gautier Capuçon is given an up-front image, the orchestra (which can be booming and fortissimo-harsh) not always the cellist’s equal, although the soloist isn’t trying to dominate, it’s more the recorded presentation of him and the LSO (September 2023, St Luke’s). It’s a fine musical partnership nonetheless. The Elgar enjoys gratifying orchestral detail and eloquent address from Capuçon in the slow movement and heaps of virtuosity in the scherzo-like predecessor, although tonally and phrasally things don’t always gel, as befits a recording to live with, and maybe Capuçon is over-intense at times, and choppy too. My front runners remain Starker/Slatkin (RCA) and Isserlis/Paavo Järvi (Hyperion), both Philharmonia Orchestra and both coupled with the Walton, and that is the more successful Concerto here. Its bittersweet languor and tropical colours are sensitively captured, there is more meaningful proficiency in the second movement (spot-on percussion, too), and an approach to the Finale (‘Theme and Improvisations’) that renders it endearingly nostalgic either side of the soloist’s cadenza-like if Theme-based passages and an episode, equally related, of orchestral brilliance. Erato 2173226483.
Gautier Capuçon records the Cello Concertos by Elgar & Walton w/ LSO & Antonio Pappano for Erato.
