This mesmerising meditation couldn't be in better hands

With his immaculate technical address and ravishingly songful, mellow tone, Isserlis strikes precisely the right balance between classical strength and private introspection, his contribution as full of radiant spontaneity and tumbling fantasy as one could wish...An unmissable release.

no praise can be too high for Isserlis’s splendid playing, eloquent without being indulgent and technically always in complete command.

So, how much has he re-thought the work during the past 25 years? The answer is not dramatically, but everything evolves a little with time, and there is definitely more musical conviction to the phrasing and general direction in the new recording - giving each movement (and indeed the whole work) a tighter and much more defined structure.

Isserlis’s playing of the solo part in the Elgar evokes an elegy for a lost world, while he captures perfectly the bittersweet languor of the Walton.

Older, wiser and even more convincing [than his first recording of the Elgar]...Isserlis’s cello rages against the dying of the light, sounding angry yet still beautiful, and under Järvi the orchestra is full-bodied but focused.

Isserlis gives a deeply touching account, the sort that restores faith in a too-often-performed work, here reclaimed as the masterpiece that it is, personal and private, yes, but outgoing in a consoling way without negating buoyancy or go-getting...There is universal appeal to this reading, thankfully without the mawkishness or exaggeration that some interpreters impose upon it.