Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello), Pascal Amoyel (piano)Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, James Gaffigan
Harmonia Mundi · HMC902209 · 47 minutes
Dutilleux’s cello concerto Tout un monde lointain is one of those pieces that demands a soloist who can hold enormous tension without ever tipping into melodrama, and Bertrand does exactly that — her sound has this luminous, searching quality that feels perfectly matched to music built from silences as much as notes. Paired with Debussy’s sonata, where Amoyel brings real conversational instinct to the piano part, the disc covers a fascinatingly French emotional terrain that moves between impressionist shimmer and mid-century existential weight. The fact that Dutilleux himself singled out her rhythmic precision and transparency tells you everything about why this recording lands so deeply.
Awards:
- BBC Music Magazine — January 2016 — Concerto Choice
“I can’t do better than quote the testimony of Henri Dutilleux himself, praising ‘the transparency of Emmanuelle Bertrand’s sound, her rhythmic strictness, her technical perfection, the brio…”
— BBC Music Magazine, January 2016,5 out of 5 stars
Christian Poltéra (cello)ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jac van Steen
BIS · BISSACD1777 · 69 minutes
Dutilleux and Lutosławski both wrote their cello concertos with Rostropovich’s almost supernatural authority in mind, so any cellist stepping into that space is walking into a long shadow. Poltéra doesn’t flinch — his technique is right there with the legendary 1975 recordings, and he brings a freshness to the music that makes you hear the splintered textures and aching lyricism almost as if for the first time. At 69 minutes, this is a deeply satisfying immersion in two of the twentieth century’s most distinctive concerto voices.
“…Christian Poltéra inevitably courts comparison with the 1975 EMI disc of Rostropovich, for whom both works were written. …in technique there’s nothing to choose between them. …the most notable…”
— BBC Music Magazine, February 2010,4 out of 5 stars
Truls Mork, Renaud CapuçonFrench Radio Orchestra, Myung-Whun Chung
Erato · 5455022 · 59 minutes
Dutilleux wrote music that feels like it’s always on the edge of becoming something else — harmonies that shimmer and dissolve, textures that seem to breathe — and both concertos here capture that restless, luminous quality beautifully. Truls Mørk brings a deep, burnished tone to Tout un monde lointain, matching the music’s sense of vast, inner distances, while Renaud Capuçon handles the violin concerto’s mercurial energy with real elegance. The short but strikingly intense Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher rounds things out as a kind of intimate postscript, a reminder of just how much Dutilleux could say in a small space.
Erdem Misirlioglu (piano), Michael Petrov (cello)
Rubicon · RCD1054 · 64 minutes
Poulenc’s Cello Sonata has this wonderful split personality — it can turn from wry and deflating to genuinely heartbroken within a few bars, and Petrov and Misirlioglu seem to understand that instinctively, never smoothing out its edges into something polite. The Franck is the emotional anchor here, that big Romantic soul doing exactly what it does, but the Dutilleux Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher is the quiet revelation — solo cello music that feels like eavesdropping on something private. It’s a smart programme that earns its running time.
Christian-Pierre La Marca (cello)
Naive · V7260 · 77 minutes
Christian-Pierre La Marca answers a deceptively simple question — what can a solo cello actually do? — with something close to a revelation across these 77 minutes. The programme roams freely through centuries of music, finding unexpected colour and counterpoint in a single instrument that, in La Marca’s hands, seems to multiply into something richer and stranger than you’d expect. It’s the kind of recording that genuinely earns its Gramophone Award, because the concept never feels like a gimmick — the playing makes the whole idea feel inevitable.
Awards:
- Gramophone Awards — 2021 — Concept Album of the Year
“What can a cellist achieve alone? A polyphonic, technicolour panorama in Christian-Pierre La Marca’s idiosyncratic tour through the distant and immediate musical past…Stand-out among the performances…”
— BBC Music Magazine, March 2021,4 out of 5 stars(Performance) /5 out of 5 stars(Recording)
Fany Maselli (bassoon), Sébastien Vichard (piano), Magali Mosnier (flute), Nora Cismondi (oboe), Jonathan Reith (trombone), Alexis Descharmes (cello), Mathieu Dupouy (harpsichord), Axel Salles (double bass), Emmanuel Curt (percussion)
Herissons · LH15 · 54 minutes
Dutilleux spent his whole career refusing to be pinned down — his chamber music sits in this fascinating middle space where post-war modernism and a very French sensibility for color and texture never quite resolve into something you can easily label. What strikes you about this recording is how the unusual combination of players — bassoon and harpsichord sharing space with trombone and double bass — lets you hear just how carefully Dutilleux calibrated timbre as a structural element, not decoration. Maselli and the ensemble treat every silence and every harmonic shimmer as load-bearing, and the result feels genuinely inhabited rather than dutiful.
Frederic Rosselet (cello)
Yarlung Records · YAR07498 · 56 minutes
There’s something quietly radical about pairing Bach’s solo cello writing with Berio, Dutilleux, and Ligeti — and Frederic Rosselet makes the case that these composers are all, in their own way, obsessed with what a single melodic line can carry on its own. His playing on this disc has a lean, unforced quality that lets the music breathe without ever feeling underpowered. The Ligeti études in particular feel genuinely unsettling, which is exactly what they should be.
Jonathan Swensen (cello)
Champs Hill Records · CHRCD168 · 75 minutes
Kodály’s Solo Sonata is one of those pieces that can make or break a recital like this — it’s so monumental that everything around it risks feeling like filler, but Swensen actually builds a program that reframes it rather than just surrendering to it. The young Danish cellist brings real charisma to the instrument, the kind that makes you lean in rather than sit back politely. At 75 minutes, Fantasia is a generous listen that earns its running time.
“Hats off to this young Danish cellist for finding a new frame for Kodály’s Solo Sonata, even if the pieces do serve to remind us of its unique strength. Jonathan Swensen, a musician of charisma…”
— BBC Music Magazine, October 2022,4 out of 5 stars(Performance) /5 out of 5 stars(Recording)
