Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Andrew Manze album reviews: A real curate’s egg and an offer of favourites

Sheku Kanneh-Mason                            Elgar                           Decca, out Friday

Rating:

Andrew Manze                         Vaughan Williams                        Onyx, out now

Rating:

Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s new album, his second for Decca, is a real curate’s egg. At the heart of it is a good performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, but the rest is a mish-mash of randomly chosen pieces, mainly arranged by Simon Parkin, who is, apparently, married to Kanneh-Mason’s cello teacher.

The album begins with Kanneh-Mason’s own arrangement of Blow The Wind Southerly for solo cello, which shows off his dark mahogany tone to great advantage.

Elsewhere, things are not so good. The arrangement of Nimrod, for solo cello and five others, is a nightmare. And Parkin’s effort with Elgar’s Romance For Bassoon And Orchestra, which the composer himself arranged for cello but here is played by a solo cello, a string quartet and a double bass, isn’t much better. 

The album begins with Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s own arrangement of Blow The Wind Southerly for solo cello, which shows off his dark mahogany tone to great advantage

The album begins with Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s own arrangement of Blow The Wind Southerly for solo cello, which shows off his dark mahogany tone to great advantage

Listening to it over a festive drink with a household name British musician, the best he could say was, ‘Do Decca really think Elgar couldn’t orchestrate?’ Elgar’s version could easily have been recorded but wasn’t. Why?

Music by Bridge, Bloch, Fauré and Klengel follows. However well Kanneh-Mason plays, frankly, it’s a mess.

Turning to the Elgar Cello Concerto, which Kanneh-Mason has often said he was inspired to learn by the famous Jacqueline du Pré recording, also with the LSO under Sir John Barbirolli, it is perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be made. 

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic play extremely well for Andrew Manze, the baroque violinist turned conductor, who has just finished a complete VW symphony cycle for Onyx

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic play extremely well for Andrew Manze, the baroque violinist turned conductor, who has just finished a complete VW symphony cycle for Onyx

Especially since du Pré was only 20, the same age as Kanneh-Mason, when her celebrated recording was set down in 1965.

Listening to du Pré, Kanneh-Mason’s playing lacks intensity and passion, and fails to fully unearth the nostalgia, verging on deep depression, with which this music is imbued. 

But then, as another great interpreter of the piece, Julian Lloyd Webber, suggested to me years ago, this is Barbirolli’s performance as much as du Pré’s.

Barbirolli was in the cello section of the LSO at the concerto’s premiere, a famous fiasco, when the leading critic of the day said the orchestra ‘disgraced themselves’. Not long after, Barbirolli, this time soloist, gave the first successful performance of a piece now regarded by many as perhaps Elgar’s most moving and eloquent.

Onyx’s superb new 70-minute album of Vaughan Williams’s orchestral music – The Lark Ascending, the Greensleeves and Tallis Fantasias, the English folk song suite, an especially fine account of the Five Variants Of ‘Dives And Lazarus’, and a striking orchestral version of the Serenade To Music – offers all his favourites on a single CD.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic play extremely well for Andrew Manze, the baroque violinist turned conductor, who has just finished a complete VW symphony cycle for Onyx on Merseyside.

James Ehnes is a first-rate violin soloist in the Lark, which ascends a bit quicker than usual, much to the music’s advantage. 

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