Pieter Wispelwey’s deeply considered relationship with Britten’s cello suites is evident from the perceptive notes he provides for this‚ his second recording of themÊ–Êthe first‚ a decade ago‚ was on the Globe label (8/92‚ nla). I particularly liked his comments on the ‘uniquely transparent...vocabulary and grammar’ of his favourite‚ No 2. At the same time‚ however‚ there’s more than a little evidence of what‚ to me‚ is over­reaction‚ and over­interpretation. For example‚ he declares (with an allusion to the film of Death in Venice) that the Barcarolle of the third suite is ‘distorted: …not the delightful bobbing of a gondola but the smells of death and decay and Visconti’. The result is a performance which is not only much slower than most other versions‚ but distorts the flow of the rhythm‚ and is all too unambiguous in its wholehearted assertion of a single and rather extreme point of view about the music. Wispelwey has a fabulous technique‚ and even when he chooses the more difficult alternations of natural and harmonic sounds (marked ossia by Britten) in the Second Suite’s fugue‚ the result is phenomenally accurate and clean. This‚ along with the undoubted sense of fantasy that informs his playing of music which is still occasionally written off as dry and pedantic‚ may be more than enough to make this your first choice for the suites. For me‚ the degree of mannerism‚ the number of times that characterful playing turns laboured and over­emphatic‚ means that the disc can’t be an outright first choice. With my longer­standing recommendation‚ Robert Cohen on Decca (6/96)‚ no longer available‚ I would suggest Jean­Guihen Queyras at budget price as the current top choice. At his best‚ as in the Second Suite’s ‘Chaconne’‚ Wispelwey is unbeatable‚ and the Channel Classics sound is first­rate. But such excellence is offset by too much that is exaggerated and even eccentric.