Steven Isserlis & Connie Shih – The Cello in Wartime (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Steven Isserlis & Connie Shih – The Cello in Wartime (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:05:38 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

The chief novelty of this release by cellist Steven Isserlis is the “trench cello” of British soldier Harold Triggs, not just a cello that was taken into the trenches, but a portable instrument that could be disassembled and packed into a box. Isserlis plays the actual instrument, lost to Triggs when he was captured by the Germans, but reunited with him in 1962 near the end of his life. There’s nothing so extraordinary about its sound, although it’s quite good all things considered, but hearing the appropriate pieces selected by Isserlis, including God Save the King and Ivor Novello’s Keep the Home Fires Burning, is undeniably haunting. (The cello on the album’s front cover is not the Triggs item, but a different homemade cello of the period.) The other works, played on Isserlis’ usual instrument, are only tangentially connected to the War, but the cello’s melancholic voice seems somehow evocative, and the defiantly French style of the Debussy Cello Sonata fits the mood. It’s also worth being reminded that the careers of Fauré and Webern overlapped. Taken in totality, the album conveys the sweep of music at the time of World War I, and that’s no small accomplishment.

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Steven Isserlis & Connie Shih – Cello Music from Proust’s Salons (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Steven Isserlis & Connie Shih – Cello Music from Proust’s Salons (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:10 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he may have admired a bit less…).

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Steven Isserlis, Connie Shih – A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Steven Isserlis, Connie Shih – A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:51 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih have recorded treasures from the Golden Cello Decade 1878-1888 for HYPERION. These years saw a welcome expansion of the repertoire for cello and piano, and although most of the composers represented here – Bruch, Strauss, Dvorák – are well known, others such as Luise Adolpha Le Beau are sure to be pleasant discoveries. With its varied program that also explores some byways of the time, this release is an absolute must for all cello lovers.

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