Foulds – Cello Concerto, Sainsbury – Cello Concerto

Lionel Sainsbury’s vibrant concerto of 1999 is heart-on-the-sleeve music, painted in bold colours, and could hardly find more enthusiastic interpreters than Wallfisch and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The soloist’s role here is one of an extrovert leader and Wallfisch, recorded well to the fore, brings vitality amd a range of emotion to the part, his beautifully focused sound taking on an urgency in its high reaches in the first movement and soaring eloquently in the intese slow movement. [John Fould’s Concerto] is full of attractive melodies. Wallfisch’s sound is not recorded quite so prominently, but his cadenza in the finale, brilliantly executed, takes his cello through virtuosic heights of double-stopping.

Janet Banks, The Strad, July 2012

If you respond well to tonal, melodious, well-written music, you will probably respond to this, especially in such an authoritative performance as this one from Raphael Wallfisch, a cellist to whom many a composer has reason to be grateful … I don’t think either of these concertos is an undiscovered masterpiece, but both are serious and satisfying works, worthy of our attention. Wallfisch is the natural choice as soloist. He plays with supreme authority in both works, devoting the same energy and care as he would to thegreatest works in the repertoire. Martin Yates, too, has shown his willingness to explore these musical backwaters, and the two orchestras play marvellously well under his direction.

William Hedley, International Record Review May 2012