Steven Isserlis

Lieux retrouvés, is available for ordering here. The recording presents Steven in partnership with Thomas Adès. It features classic works by Liszt, Faure, and Janacek, and music written for Steven by György Kurtág and Thomas Adès himself.

Sunday Times review

Ades, Liszt, Faure et al — Lieux retrouvés et al
Steven Isserlis (cello), Thomas Adès (piano)
Hyperion CDA67948

Isserlis’s brilliant recital disc with Adès makes an admirably integrated whole. The Proustianly titled Lieux retrouvés (2009), which Adès wrote for the cellist and himself, is, in effect, a four-movement sonata whose figuration and part-writing knock at the door of the complex to seek the visionary. Isserlis is furiously lyrical and concentrated here, but no less so in the other works, which offer aptly Romantic-modern context for Adès’s inspiration. Fauré’s beautiful Second Sonata is dispatched not merely with superb elan, but with almost desperate intensity from both players. Janacek’s Pohadka, three late Liszt pieces, and four short sharp solos by Kurtag, Adès’s teacher, complete the sequence. PD

To read the Gramophone review please click on the image below.