Presto Recording of the Week
1st November 2024

Steven Isserlis (cello), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Boccherini: Cello Concerto No. 6 in D Major, G. 479
Boccherini: Cello Sonata in C minor, G2
Boccherini: String Quintet in D Minor, G. 280
Boccherini: Cello Sonata in F major, G9
Boccherini: Cello Concerto No. 2 in A Major, G. 475 "The Frog"
Boccherini: String Quintet in E Major, Op. 11 / 5, G. 275: III. Minuetto – Trio – Minuetto da capo

Boccherini's cello concertos, some twelve in number, were written comparatively early in his career, all dating from the years during which he toured as a virtuoso.

And by the way: what a virtuoso! Presuming that he could play his own music, which I think is a fair presumption, he must have been a truly wonderful player; one can feel it in the writing, as challenging as anything composed for the cello before the twentieth century, at least. (The great Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, an avid Boccheriniphile, considered Boccherini to have been, on the evidence of his music, the greatest cellist of all time.)

"It’s a surprisingly chamber-oriented album, with even the two cello concertos inhabiting an astonishingly delicate, translucent sound-world. The first concerto makes a striking impression with some very high writing for the soloist, often duetting with the first violin on almost equal terms. It put me in mind of the great violist Lionel Tertis’s version of Elgar’s cello concerto (recorded last year by Timothy Ridout) – if I didn’t already know these were cello works, I could have been fooled into thinking I was hearing a viola." - Presto Music, 1st November 2024