Elgar - Cello Concerto [Kirshbaum/Gibson- The Scottish National Orchestra]Here's an Elgar Cello Concerto i had on disc, i sell discs, and this is one that i'm in two minds on, should i sell it or should i keep it?, the solution of course is to 'give it a spin', and see what i think, it also has an interesting Walton coupling, my 'touchstone' Elgar Cello Concerto recording is the Lloyd-Webber / Menuhin, and this recording is consistently slower in every movement, and especially where Kirshbaum is playing solo, he seems to dwell on his own beauty, a bit narcissistic, the final movement suffers the most, must be 15% slower.
Ralph Kirshbaum is American, now 65 years old, he made this recording way back in 1979, must be one of the early digital discs made by Chandos as the DDD era only started about then, the front booklet cover shows a very dark picture, skillfully lit, and it's only the highlights that create the picture [photo by Clive Barda].
It was the short second movement Allegro Molto i liked the best, i'm not entirely sure where the second movement starts officially, but on this recording the indexing starts with the cello playing deep bass pizzicato notes over an orchestral bass string drone [0:00-0:19], the cello is caught superbly on the recording, with a nice acoustic twang, Kirshbaum caresses the phrases, after a short solo cadenza, the cello moves into frantic playing mode, interspersed with a more lyrical and languid playing, right at the end the cello finishes things off with a choice pizzicato finale [5:10-5:14], a nice foil for the following Adagio, i think the final analysis is to listen to it some more!.
Here's Seeli Toivio playing the second movement on YouTube.
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