Tenebrae, Steven Isserlis, Guy Johnston, Philharmonia Orchestra – Rebecca Dale: Night Seasons (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:05:28 minutes | 1,65 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
Hailed by Classic FM as “one of today’s most exciting young composers” Rebecca Dale is a London based composer, working most often with large orchestral and choral forces in the worlds of cinema and theatre. Night Seasons is an album about hope, looking for the light in difficult times, written during a time of personal dif- ficulty while her father was terminally ill. With works written for choir and cello it strives to be a hopeful album, reaching for the wonder around us. Rebecca Dale says “It’s been one of the great privileges of my life to be able to write for cellist heroes of mine to whom I grew up listening. I also got to have fun setting some famous poems… I am indebted to everyone who has created this album with me”.
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Steven Isserlis – Re-Visions (2010)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 58:11 minutes | Digital Booklet | 2,58 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Digital Booklet | 995 MB
Features Stereo & Multichannel Surround Sound | BIS Records # BIS-SACD-1782
Cellist Steven Isserlis once again displays his ingenuity and innovation in programming on this 2010 release combining four works for cello and orchestra that wouldn’t even exist without him: all arrangements were made at his personal request, each one by the arranger of his personal choice. The most radical reworking is the opening selection, based on a suite composed for cello and orchestra by a 19-year-old Debussy, which only survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of, or rather replacement for, Debussy’s original composition, Sally Beamish uses the piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period. Isserlis also includes revisions of two Ravel songs, Prokofiev’s incomplete Concertino and Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life, ending with the movement entitled Prayer. Throughout the fascinating programme, Isserlis is backed by the Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy.
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Steven Isserlis, The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen – Haydn & Bach: Cello Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:46 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion
Over the course of his career, Steven Isserlis has performed the two cello concertos of Franz Joseph Haydn with several orchestras, and recorded them previously with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on RCA. This 2017 Hyperion release features Isserlis performing Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, H. 7b:1 and the Cello Concerto No. 2 in D major, H. 7b:2 with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in a lively, all-Classical program that also includes Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Cello Concerto No. 3 in A major, H439, and two short filler pieces, Isserlis’ arrangement of Geme la tortorella from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, and the Adagio from Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in G major, G480.
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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)
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 – Tavener: No Longer Mourn for Me & Other Works for Cello (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:59 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
An important release which again demonstrates Steven Isserlis’s deep commitment to the music of John Tavener. The realization of the album is movingly detailed in a booklet note which provides an eloquent counterpoint and commentary to the performances.
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Steven Isserlis – British Solo Cello Music: Britten Suite No. 3, Walton, Gardner, Merrick & Adès (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:18:28 minutes | 2,91 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion
If Britten’s Cello Suite No 3 is the undisputed masterpiece here, the other works are no less deserving of attention, Frank Merrick’s Suite in the eighteenth-century style being a particular delight. As ever, Steven Isserlis’s booklet notes offer fascinatingly personal perspectives on the composers and their music.
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Steven Isserlis, Robert Levin – Ludwig van Beethoven: Cello Sonatas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:38:55 minutes | 2,72 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
In this new chamber recording, Steven Isserlis together with his regular collaborator, fortepianist Robert Levin, presents a magisterial and long-awaited compendium of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, including Beethoven’s arrangement of his Op 17 Horn Sonata. The use of the fortepiano opens up a wealth of sonic possibilities for these works.
Read more![Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Jeremy Denk, Academy of St Martin in the Fields - For the Love of Brahms (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/01/0886445820348_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Jeremy Denk, Academy of St Martin in the Fields – For the Love of Brahms (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:22 minutes | 1,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical
Heartland American violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis have known each other for many years and have often performed together. This release, spearheaded by Bell in his post as music director of the venerable Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, is a bit unwieldy, but has moments that make it worth the time and money of Bell fans especially. The three works, loosely linked by the concept described in the title, have their background abundantly described by Isserlis in the booklet. The Double Concerto for violin and cello in A minor, Op. 102, is conducted by Bell from the violin. There are moments that show his star quality, contrasting nicely with the detailed, concentrated approach of Isserlis, and the relatively small size of the Academy probably approximates the way Brahms imagined the work. There are smoother versions of this curiously restrained, deliberate work, however. In the slow movement of the Schumann Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23, Isserlis takes an orchestral cello line as a solo for no very good reason. The album finishes strongly, however, with the original 1854 version of the Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8, which Brahms reworked in 1889 but did not, as Isserlis points out, discard (and he discarded plenty of other music). It’s a passionate, tumultuous work of Brahms’ youth, and Isserlis and Bell come together with pianist Jeremy Denk to make the best possible case for it. Sample the “Scherzo” with its daring rhythmic shift to waltz, and hear Bell’s way with the expressive violin parts of the outer movements, and you’ll come to understand Brahms’ ambivalent attitude toward this early work. The 1854 version of the work is less often recorded than the 1889 reworking, and a fine, stirring performance of it is reason enough to pay the admission price here. ~AllMusic Review by James Manheim
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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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Steven Isserlis, Philharmonia Orchestra, Paavo Järvi – Elgar & Walton: Cello Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:59 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
Sir Edward Elgar’s sublime Cello Concerto receives an impassioned new performance from Steven Isserlis, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Paavo Järvi. With additional works by Sir William Walton and Gustav Holst, as well as a miniature suite for solo cello by Imogen Holst, this is unquestionably one of the year’s most eagerly awaited releases.
Read more![Steven Isserlis, Richard Egarr - Bach, Handel & Scarlatti: Gamba Sonatas (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/21/vzY1Ozm.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Steven Isserlis, Richard Egarr – Bach, Handel & Scarlatti: Gamba Sonatas (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:44 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
Bach wrote three wonderful sonatas for the viola da gamba (an early, slightly smaller relative of the modern cello). Lovingly recorded by Steven Isserlis and Richard Egarr, they are here joined by works by Handel and Scarlatti in a programme of haunting tranquillity.
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Steven Isserlis – reVisions (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:10 minutes | 510 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: November 2009 at the Tapiola Concert Hall, Finland
Steven Isserlis has earned a reputation as one of the foremost cellists of our day. At the same time he has become known for his ingenuity and innovation in programming, something which this disc is the perfect example of. It combines four works for cello and orchestra that wouldn’t even exist without Isserlis – all arrangements made at his personal request, and each of them by the arranger of his personal choice. The most radical reworking is the opening piece, an arrangement based on the fact that Debussy at the age of 19 composed a Suite for cello and orchestra. All that is known for certain about this suite is that its fourth movement was called Intermezzo, and that this piece has survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of – or rather replacement for – Debussy’s original composition, Sally Beamish has used this piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period, including the piano pieces Rêverie and Danse bohémienne. The two Ravel songs which follow were arranged by Isserlis’ friend, the violinist Richard Tognetti in order to supplement the concert programme for a tour that the two were to make with Tognetti’s own Australian Chamber Orchestra. Vladimir Blok’s orchestration of Prokofiev’s Concertino, which had been left incomplete at the death of the composer, was made as Isserlis was unhappy with the existing arrangement of the work, made by Kabalevsky. The disc closes with the earliest of these four re-visions, film composer Christopher Palmer’s orchestration of Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life, allowing the disc to end with the movement entitled Prayer – ‘one of the most fervently beautiful pieces ever written for the cello’, according to Steven Isserlis himself. Throughout the programme Isserlis receives the expert support of Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy. (more…)
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