Gaillard’s glorious cello playing keeps the emotion raw and immediate throughout the programme, grabbing us by the scruff of the neck with a red-hot interpretation of Schelomo. Her tone is vivid, driven and lamenting. It could sound clichéd to say the music just pours out of her, but it really does…Gaillard gives [the Korngold] the performance of its life, angry, molten and impassioned.

Throughout the programme one is aware of Ophélie Gaillard’s acute sense of engagement, stylish and expressive playing, conveying a feeling this is music to be enjoyed.

The French cellist offers big-boned, passionate accounts of works exploring Jewish identity and diaspora in early twentieth-century America; the single-movement Korngold concerto in particular comes off with real silver-screen sweep and élan, and the much-recorded Bloch more than holds its own in the face of distinguished competition on disc.

Achingly beautiful music that is an ideal canvas for her impassioned and deeply expressive playing … a most exhilarating performance … Gaillard has an undoubted affinity with Korngold’s sumptuously beautiful music

a masterly, one-movement creation, full of driven, passionately songful inspiration and finds in Ophélie Gaillard a thrillingly committed champion