Natalie Clein's opening statement is confident and clean: this is an Elgar with pace and portamento, but rather thin on poetry. The upside is the delightful selection of salon pieces at the end of this disc. In the impish La capricieuse and the touching Sospiri, we glimpse the mature, distinctive artist.

Clein’s playing has an especially warm tone and smooth phrasing; her cello treats each note with the same love, and these qualities make hers a particularly unique interpretation. Elgar’s sense of loss is conveyed powerfully under her fingers, but with a gentleness that du Pré’s tempestuous-to-the-point-of-rough delivery never gave.

Clein demonstrated the lyricism on which she’s building a solid reputation, her instrument … blossoming into a rich, burnished voice. Threads became soaring melodies, fragments made textural sense.