At once tough and inspiring, the cellist Steven Isserlis’s tribute to John Tavener, No Longer Mourn for Me, combines various musical forces, giving a chance to hear Tavener in his many creative guises. Isserlis is joined by seven fellow cellists in his own arrangements of Tavener’s serene Preces and Responses (2013) and his Shakespeare sonnet setting No Longer Mourn for Me (2010). Other works feature the soloists Matthew Rose (bass) and Abi Sampa (Sufi singer), Trinity Boys Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Omer Meir Wellber. The music charts the close friendship between composer and cellist and their families. It also pays homage to Isserlis’s late wife, Pauline, to whom Tavener dedicated the powerful monodrama for bass The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2012). A highlight is the mantra Mahámátar (2000), in which chant is overlaid with an improvised hymn of praise: Tavener at his most eclectic and ethereal.

The Guardian