The real surprise here is the Kabalevsky. In the past I've found getting to know Kabalevsky more of a duty than a pleasure, but the Second Cello Concerto is a strong and obviously highly personal work, despite a lingering flavour of Shostakovich and occasional leanings towards cinematic grandiloquence. Raphael Wallfisch plays superbly, achieving a near-miraculous pizzicato espressivo in the opening and closing pages of the first movement. It is this opening Molto sostenuto that impresses most deeply: sparsely scored and economical of gesture, it may be a little softer-edged than many comparable Shostakovich slow movements, but there's no denying the intensity of the experience communicated - still more impressive for the restrained manner of address. The finale's initial song-theme may teeter precariously on the edge of sentimentality, but the working-out and resigned conclusion are well handled. All the same, I wonder how it would have sounded given a less convincing - or rather less convinced performance: Wallfisch manages searing eloquence where required without lapsing into histrionics, and Bryden Thomson has plainly persuaded the LPO of the value of the music. The spaciousness of the recording doesn't bother me at all - though was the first movement cadenza recorded after the orchestra had gone? The building does sound disturbingly empty at this point.
Much less to my liking is the Khachaturian - full of winning (and some not so winning) tunes and imaginative touches, but as so often with Khachaturian, one feels that structure has been left almost to chance. Thomson and Wallfisch do their best, but on the whole the material refuses to be motivated. The old charge that Khachaturian forced his inspirations into half-understood Western models does have some credibility here.
Glazunov's Chant du menestrel is altogether simpler, and vastly more successful given its more modest terms. Wallfisch gives it his all - eloquence, range of colour, fine control of the long phrase. It makes very enjoyable listening.
Stephen Johnson
Gramophone, June 1988