MacDowell: Romance for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 35

“There is much more to an encore, as Alban Gerhardt will tell you, than casually capping a recital with an audience-pleaser...Listen to Gerhardt in Benjamin Godard’s Berceuse de Jocelyn and there is a paradigm of the exceptional eloquence and discernment that distinguishes the entire disc.” The Telegraph, 2nd June 2011 *****

“his playing [is] less heart-on-sleeve than Casals's own, but wonderfully eloquent and noble: he can be extraordinarily moving in such once-familiar standards as the Berceuse from Godard's Jocelyn, or in Casals's arrangement of Chopin's Raindrop Prelude...Some of this music makes considerable demands on the pianist, and Cecile Licad rises to its challenges with considerable elegance.” The Guardian, 9th June 2011 ****

“Gerhardt has a honeyed, liquid tone all his own. He has created a well-contrasted programme that clearly took a long time to research and hone...This is cello playing of exquisite sophistication and bold imagination. Casals, I feel sure, would have approved.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2011 *****

“An unexpected disc from a cellist one usually thinks of as a heavyweight...he brings to them absolutely the same seriousness of approach and sensitivity that he does to everything. And it works for an album that feels worthwhile as well as easily digestible.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2011

"Stephen Prutsman, a Tchaikovsky competition finalist in 1990, makes a good impression... Resonant sound and fine orchestral support are further points in the Naxos column." - American Record Guide (Mark Koldys) May/June 2001

“Music of another time, another age, the Mac- Dowell piano concertos can, in the right hands, seem more endearing than quaint or overblown.
Both may satisfy conventional notions of dark and light, of tragedy and skittishness, but their heart-easing, lavishly decorated themes understandably attracted Liszt. Stephen Prutsman, a brilliant and versatile pianist, plays with ease and fluency, tossing aside the Presto movements from both concertos with an enviable sheen, though arguably without a necessarily committed or potent romanticism. Suave and engaging in the Grieg-haunted Andante tranquillo from the A minor Concerto, he loses his poise in the deeply welling più mosso, con passione from the D minor Concerto's first movement, and it's here, in particular, that one misses Van Cliburn's unforgettable warmth and virtuosity. No pianist has played this concerto with such magisterial command or emotional generosity; indeed, it sounds as if it was written for him. Eugene List, too, shows a higher degree of involvement than Prutsman, though it must be admitted that the latter's occasional reticence results from Naxos's recessed sound, which irons out much sense of dynamic perspective or variety. Too often Prutsman is confined to the shadows when he should be centre-stage. The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland has its uneasy moments, but world-premiere recordings of the Hexentanz, in an arrangement for piano and orchestra, and the Romance for cello and orchestra make this a tempting issue.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010