Cello Concertos

.'…the panache of Wallfisch's playing comes over the more forcefully, and the tenderness of the slow movement is reinforced to at a more spacious speed.'
- Gramophone

This is a new coupling featuring these two cello concertos performed by Raphael Wallfisch which, when originally released, received a three-star Penguin Guide Award.

Raphael Wallfisch performed the Cello Concerto by Finzi conducted by exclusive Chandos artist and Finzi specialist Richard Hickox in a BBC Promenade Concert on July 28th this year.

Those who know Finzi only from his more lyrical songs, perhaps even from his Clarinet Concerto as well, might be surprised at the breadth and power of this work, but songs such as Channel Firing - in effect a seven-minute symphonic poem - and He Abjures Love indicate a wider range. The Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra of 1953 (though the Fantasia dates from 1928) is a highly original concerto with a curious, twisted strength, so the turbulence of the Cello Concerto's first movement is not unaccountable.

Finzi had long had a cello concerto in mind, and some of it already composed, when Sir John Barbirolli asked him for a major work for performance at the Cheltenham Festival. Finzi completed the work in 1955 and it was first performed by Christopher Bunting and The Hallé Orchestra under Barbirolli on 19 July of the same year.

Kenneth Leighton studied composition at Oxford and subsequently in Rome with Petrassi. Throughout his lifetime he achieved many prestigious awards for his compositions, including the Royal Philharmonic Society prize, the Busoni prize, the Trieste prize and the Cobbett medal. Leighton's compositions are characterised by their melodic lyricism, a liberal use of instrumental colour and a flair for solo writing which is well demonstrated in the Cello Concerto, his seventh concertante work. The concerto was begun in Naples during the summer of 1955 and was completed the following spring.

'Finzi's Cello Concerto is perhaps the most searching of all his works. Wallfisch finds all the dark eloquence of the central movement, and the performance overall has splendid impetus, with Handley providing the most sympathetic backing. The Chandos recording has an attractively natural balance.'
The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs

'Raphael Wallfisch plays the Concerto as if his life depended on it… The recording is very immediate, and has stunning clarity and definition.'
The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs