This is the second time that Raphael Wallfisch has recorded
Delius’s 1916 Cello Sonata. The earlier recording, with his
father Peter, was for Chandos (CHAN8499) and included works
by Bax, Bridge and Walton. This time Wallfisch has constructed
a Delius and Grieg programme, which widens the focus beyond
British music and rightly, thereby, celebrates the friendship
between the two composers.
He and York convey Delian flux very well, ensuring that the
work’s architecture isn’t imperilled by too discursive a view,
something I think sometimes happened with the last performance
I heard of the sonata, by Paul and Huw Watkins. Wallfisch’s
latest recordings is somewhat slower than his more ardent Chandos
reading, which mirrored the first ever recording of the sonata,
by dedicatee Beatrice Harrison and Harold Craxton, but timings
don’t always tell the story in Delius as long as there is continuity
of thought and phraseology, as there is here. In fact I detect
a touch more melancholy in this new performance. You will also
find some other Delius. The 1896 Romance is an early
not yet fully distinctive work, whilst Chanson d’Automne
has been arranged by John York from a song, and makes a nice
addition. The Caprice and Elegy were again
written for Harrison, and indeed recorded by her with an unnamed
orchestra conducted by Eric Fenby in 1930. The Elegy
is certainly a representative example of late Delius. The Wallfisch/York
team plays all these smaller pieces with thorough understanding
and fine tonal resources.
They play the Grieg Sonata in A minor with acute perception
as to its sense of line, bringing a necessary sense of dynamism
from the first bars, but relaxing the tension for the lyrical
episodes. This they do with natural legato and a mixture of
phrasal perception and tonal shading and colour. In this York
proves a most effective ally, matching Wallfisch him step by
step, leading the chordal assertiveness with controlled fire
that doesn’t overstep stylistic boundaries. They respond to
some of the more agitated passages of the slow movement with
real passion and deal similarly with the self-assertion in the
finale as well as the little folkloric musings, especially when
the piano has the delicate lead, the cello accompanying in pizzicati.
The 1866 Intermezzo is a brief but attractive morceau
and the Allegretto that followed a year later is the
composer’s transcription, a little altered, of the similar movement
from his final and most successful Violin Sonata.
This is a most successful disc, excellently engineered, and
annotated.
Jonathan Woolf
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Raphael Wallfisch (cello)