Once again, utterly distinctive playing from Yo-Yo Ma! I doubt if any other cellist nowadays could play the opening of the Britten in such a heightened vocal manner and get away with it. Rostropovich sounds almost cautious by comparison. In the winding-down passage before the first movement repeat his expansiveness strains my credulity a little; on the whole though Ma and Ax's conviction and sheer musicality carry the performance through. The openness and ardour of the ''Elegia'' took me completely by surprise—it's a much knottier, more inward-looking thing in Rostropovich's hands (Decca), and Baillie (Etcetera/Harmonia Mundi) and Lloyd Webber (Philips) also strive for a more intimate manner (with greater success in Baillie's case, I think).
Timings for the Strauss are revealing, in the first two movements Ma and Ax take rather longer than Chiffoleau and Reach (Adda/Target), and it's easy to hear why; confronted with a piece of rich Straussian lyricism like the first movement's 'second first theme', Ma opens out generously and enjoys every little turn or harmonic shift. That it doesn't sound merely self-indulgent is due to Ma's strong sense of larger shape. In one or two passages in the Britten first movement he comes close to losing it—not here though.
Certainly Ma and Ax are more persuasive in the Strauss than the French duo—and for all its fine points, the piece does need a little help from its interpreters. As for the Britten, I think Ma and Ax probe deeper than Lloyd Webber and McCabe and there's a more direct appeal to the listener than in the Baillie/Brown version, though the Etcetera team pull the structural threads tauter. CBS offer a very fine recording, too; bright, clear and well balanced. But the winner here is still the superbly transferred Decca recording, with composer and dedicatee. showing how intensity and expressive freedom lose nothing by being kept under strict control.'