Review from Gramophone, Dec.2018

‘I saw the lilacs still in full bloom, the grass still long, and the roses just starting to blossom.’ Tchaikovsky’s words to his benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck, accompanying his Three Pieces, Op 42, could stand as a motto for the whole of Daniel Müller-Schott’s disc, which in repertoire terms is something of a treasure chest for cellophiles.

The title Souvenir d’un lieu cher only appeared in editions after Tchaikovsky’s death; he himself merely dedicated the pieces to Brailov (a town in Ukraine). Originally composed for violin and piano, and conceived during the composer’s work on his Violin Concerto, these pieces became better known in Glazunov’s arrangement for violin and orchestra. Müller-Schott plays the violin part here – for the first time, he claims – on the cello. The melancholic outer movements are perfectly served by the instrument and by Müller-Schott’s warm tone. The brisk Scherzo, however, is not entirely convincing in its new, heavier garb.

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 4 & 5 Robert Casadesus ICA Classics F ICAC5154 Mozart Violin Concertos Yehudi Menuhin ICA Classics M b ICAC5153 Various Cpsrs Orch Wks Pierre Monteux ICA Classics B d ICAC5150 Various Cpsrs Orch Wks BBC SO / Bruno Walter ICA Classics M b ICAC5151 Brahms German Requiem, etc BBC SO / Otto Klemperer ICA Classics M b ICAC5152

Tchaikovsky and Glazunov alternate in the rest of the disc, their dialogue broken only by Rimsky-Korsakov’s charming and unpretentious Sérénade. Müller-Schott is sympathetic and perfectly satisfying in his own way, until you hear, say, Glazunov’s elegiac Chant du ménestrel from Rostropovich, who goes beyond Romantic plaintiveness into an epic statement of sorrow and pain. Having studied Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations not only with Rostropovich but also before that with Walter Nothas and Steven Isserlis, Müller-Schott says he had to find his own ‘personal approach’. That approach proves perfectly tasteful and solid but it is still not remotely a match for Rostropovich and Karajan’s magic (like them he goes for the Fitzenhagen ordering, though in concert he apparently favours the original). If there is anything like hygge in music, the Berlin Philharmonic’s rendition of the opening bars of the Rococo Variations would surely be it. Aziz Shokhakimov fails to elicit anything like a comparable range of velvety colours, and the unduly cello-focused balance throughout the disc relegates the orchestra even further to a subordinate role. Michelle Assay