Cellists are apt to 'come of age' in recordings of the Elgar. Isserlis was no exception. This is a wonderful account of the Concerto – brave, imaginative, individual – indeed, quite the most personal in its perception of the piece since the treasurable du Pré on EMI. And that, you'll appreciate, is saying something though not, we hasten to add, that the two readings are in any outward sense similar. Far from it. With Isserlis, the emotional tug is considerably less overt, the emphasis more on shadow and subtext than open heartache. Yet the inner light is no less intense, the phrasing no less rhapsodic in manner than du Pré. On the contrary. This is freerange Elgar all right, and like du Pré it comes totally without affectation. Both Isserlis and du Pré take an appropriately generous line on the first movement's sorrowful song, with Isserlis the more reposeful, the more inclined to open out and savour key cadences. The Scherzo itself is quite simply better played than on any previous recording; the articulation and definition of the semiquaver 'fours' would, we're sure, have astonished even the composer himself. From a technical point of view Isserlis is easily the equal, and more, of any player currently before us. And if you still feel that du Pré really did have the last word where the epilogue is concerned, then listen to Isserlis sinking with heavy heart into those pages preceding the return of the opening declamation.
He achieves a mesmerising fragility in the bars marked lento – one last backward glance, as it were – and the inwardness of the final diminuendo is something to be heard and remembered. Hickox and the LSO prove model collaborators. Don't on any account miss these performances.