Dvorak: Rondo in G minor for cello & piano, Op. 94, B. 171

“This recording bathes the listener in a stream of irresistable song that lingers in the memory weeks later. It also proves how well the composer's lyricism translates across timbre and sonority: this 'Song to the Moon' is as searingly effective as any I've heard sung...the recorded sound is ideal.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2013 ****

“[the Sonatina] works particularly well in its new baritone and tenor register...This attests to both the sensitive way in which Poltera has adapted the music to the cello medium and to the deft and affectionate manner in which he plays it. So natural does the Sonatina sound on the cello that you wonder why Dvorak himself never thought of doing it.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2013

“Isserlis and Hough are perfectly matched here, offering poetic, tender and generous spirited music-making. Both have a distinctive luminescence of tone, enabling them to place emphasis on beauty, intimacy and phrasing that really speaks” Classic FM Magazine

“Deeply considered, immensely satisfying accounts. Isserlis and Hough make a formidable team” Gramophone Magazine

“Maisky's performance of these works could hardly be bettered. Strauss's Sonata has enormous youthful élan, and the arrangements of the Romance for cello and orchestra and Morgen are exquisite. The expertly made Dvorák arrangements fare equally well.. Excellently recorded, this recital wins on all counts.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 *****

“Wholehearted performances that make the best of youthful musical ideas.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2009

“The cellist plunges heart and soul into this romantic-flavoured recital with the pianist Pavel Gililov. The pair’s passion helps to glue together the extravagances of Strauss’s Cello Sonata. For music with an individual voice, we must wait for Dvorák’s Sonatina. DG’s recording lets us feel Maisky’s every throb and tear…” The Times, 28th February 2009 ****

“Isserlis here achieves a beauty, finesse and attack with the cello less evident from his playing 20 years ago: his technique is phenomenal, his bowing at once wildly abandoned and absolutely precise in terms of his musical intentions. He has the advantage of a brother-in-arms in Hough, who treats the score with the symphonic sweep it deserves.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

“In 1984 Steven Isserlis made excellent recordings for Hyperion of the Brahms sonatas with Peter Evans; this time he's added some substantial extra items – the two Suk pieces, wonderfully played, are particularly welcome. The new recording is fuller in sound and more realistic; Stephen Hough's commanding playing of Brahms's 'big' piano parts could, one feels, overpower the cello but, thanks to his sensitivity, this never happens.
In the sonatas, the timings are in nearly every case slightly shorter, due not to any very different tempi but because the music now flows more easily, with less sense of effort. Some listeners may miss the intensity of Evans's involvement with the music but the new versions have a wonderful sense of line, and Hough's more detached approach comes with vivid characterisation – seen in the sinister colours of No 2's Allegro passionato, for example, or the limpid, elegant playing of No 1's Allegrettoquasi menuetto.
Only in one place, the finale of No 2, is there the feeling that Hough's fluency creates a problem: repeating the opening theme, he pushes on in a way that detracts from the sunny, contented atmosphere at the start. These are deeply considered, immensely satisfying accounts. Isserlis and Hough make a formidable team.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Sonically the instruments are equal partners, and musically that's deliciously the case as well, with Isserlis and Hough reacting to every nuance of the other's playing, finishing each others' musical sentences...The timbre of Isserlis's gut-strung cello is another plus” Andrew McGregor, bbc.co.uk, 29th November 2005