Not since Nigel Kennedy's landmark recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in 1989 has a British classical musician earned a place in the Top 10 of the UK Official Album Charts, but all that changed today as it was announced that Sheku Kanneh-Mason's new album, Elgar, is a new entry at No 8. The album is, perhaps unsurprisingly, also No 1 in the Specialist Classical Chart.

The centrepiece of the album is a performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, but Elgar also features music by Frank Bridge, Ernest Bloch, Julius Klengel and Fauré.

Reaching No 8 in the UK Official Album Charts is a remarkable achievement for the 20-year-old cellist, who is still studying music at the Royal Academy of Music in London and was named an MBE in the New Year's Honours list. 

On hearing the news of his chart success, Kanneh-Mason said: 'I am so excited that my album is in the Top 10 of the Official UK Album Chart – thank you Edward Elgar for writing such a fantastic piece of music! And thank you to Sir Simon Rattle and all the other great artists who feature on the recording too.'

Sheku Kanneh-Mason won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016 and his debut album, Inspiration, reached No 11 in the UK Album Chart following his memorable performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in May 2018. 

In a recent interview with Gramophone's Richard Bratby, Kanneh-Mason explained how, with so many famous interpretations of the Elgar Cello Concerto on record (most famously of all, of course, by Jacqueline du Pré), he found his own way into this music: ‘Just playing it, and listening to the harmony, tells you a lot. The way the chords subtly move and change; there’s a lot of expression in those chords alone. The concerto is a mixture of things, including confusion. Particularly in the second movement, there’s a kind of unsettled quality. Maybe a lot of people see that movement as humorous, but I think it’s more unsettled and unstable than humorous. And the first movement I think is very sad, but not always outwardly sad. And maybe that’s what Elgar was like as a person. There’s a lot of loneliness and sadness, but not in an obvious, “out there”, way.’