Steven Isserlis returns to the Elgar Concerto 20 years after his last recording, and the added maturity he brings to bear is everywhere apparent. Indeed this is one of the most satisfying recordings this now much loved work has received. Isserlis’s admiration for the piece is conveyed, not just in his playing, with the Philharmonia under Paavo Järvi, but also in a vigorous liner note, which makes much of the fiasco of the first performance. Isserlis blames the conductor Albert Coates for taking up all the rehearsal time for his part of the concert, leaving Elgar, who was conducting, and the soloist Felix Salmond, too little time to work on the piece, with an under-prepared orchestra. The Sunday Times critic Ernest Newman wrote; 'Never has so great an orchestra made so lamentable a public exhibition of itself!' Lady Elgar was especially upset with Coates, and died within a few months. Isserlis wears his heart on his sleeve here, declaring, tongue in cheek, that Coates should have been charged with her manslaughter! This exceptional 73-minute issue finds room not just for Walton’s underrated Cello Concerto, composed in 1956 for the Russian/American virtuoso Gregor Piatigorsky, but also for Holst’s Invocation, and his daughter Imogen Holst’s Fall of the Leaf (1963) for solo cello, that Isserlis played at the composer's 70th birthday back in 1977.

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