KEY POINTS:
English cellist Natalie Clein has lived with Elgar's Concerto for more than a decade.
In 1994, at 16, she won the coveted BBC Young Musician of the Year playing this work; now in her first orchestral recording, she tackles it with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Vernon Handley.
If Jacqueline Du Pre was drawn to the autumnal fires of Elgar's masterpiece then Clein's take is more mellow, without any emotional short-changing. The lilting theme of its first movement quests with telling rubato; outbursts of recitative are no less dramatic for their full, lyrical tone.
Vernon Handley is a fine Elgarian - he conducted Nigel Kennedy's 1984 recording of the composer's Violin Concerto.
Clein's programme is completed by arrangements of shorter Elgar pieces. Most are vintage salon fare and pleasant listening, even if it is strange to hear Salut d'Amour singing its way through the orchestral weave rather than soaring in the violin register.
The 1914 Sospiri was written at the beginning of the same war that inspired the darker commentary of the Cello Concerto. The string lines are part sigh, part sob and yet there is an elegiac stoicism in the dialogue that Julian Milone's arrangement introduces.
Perhaps this might be an encore when Clein brings the Concerto to the Auckland Town Hall in April.
Nigel Kennedy's capers are well known to Auckland concertgoers. Little surprise then that the man has been lensed through a vodka bottle for the cover of his new Polish Spirit.
Working with the legendary Polish Chamber Orchestra under Jacek Kaspszyk, Kennedy gives us two obscure concertos by Emil Mlynarski (1870-1935) and Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909). Musically, both are inclined to bump and stutter along and are happiest in their dancing finales.
Kennedy's performance is spirited but sometimes alarmingly casual and he signs off by scooping and swooping his way through two Chopin Nocturnes, in leaden arrangements by Krzesimir Debsky. The concept is rather similar to some of the ventures that Gidon Kremer is known for, without, alas, the Latvian violinist's style or adventurousness.
* Natalie Clein: Elgar Cello Concerto (EMI 01409)
Nigel Kennedy: Polish Spirit (EMI 79934)
