I was particularly grateful to receive this set, principally because it affords me the opportunity of putting to rights an omission from my Gramophone Collection on Dvorák’s Cello Concerto (2/11), namely Pieter Wispelwey’s second recording – which I actually requested in the article, not knowing (or having forgotten) that my request had already been granted. EG’s original review was fairly ecstatic (“outstanding”, he said), and I would largely echo his enthusiasm. The newer version enjoys a strongly etched and considered accompaniment by the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer, flexible as always, and with plenty of salient detail. Wispelwey’s interpretation gained both in maturity and sophistication, although I find his handling of the finale’s last, climactic cadence a trifle overstated. As to the earlier recording under Lawrence Renes, I still love the way “he tiptoes into the slow movement, as if from within the orchestra” – an effect that’s not quite matched on the later version which, in all other key respects, is superior. Tomáš Jamník’s excellent new recording is another strong contender, sympathetically accompanied under Tomáš Netopil, an imaginative Dvorákian with a keen ear (note the clarinet in duet with the cello for the finale’s second subject). Jamník’s performance is focused and assured, not at all in step with the more heavily romanticised approach of the Rostropovich school. The CD context here is, usefully, the tuneful Rondo and Silent Woods, both sensitively dispatched, and the “Youth” Cello Concerto, which Dvorák finished (with piano accompaniment only) when he was in his twenties, and which was only premiered – in that form – some 66 years later. An orchestration by Günter Raphael is musically meddlesome, apparently, and the accepted version nowadays is the one that Jarmil Burghauser published in the 1970s and that Miloš Sádlo recorded at around the same time. Jamník has made further revisions – for example, the last two movements are now performed attacca, which means the whole piece is played as a single movement. The opening phrases are unmistakably Dvorákian and the dancing finale is very catchy; but in other respects, although much happens that you may well want to revisit, the concerto as a whole lacks formal cohesiveness. If you want the “full works”, as originally written with piano, you’ll need yet another Supraphon release, featuring cellist Jirí Bárta, but comparing Jamník with Sádlo in this early concerto, I’d say the younger cellist has the lighter touch, whereas the older player is marginally more intense. By the way, Sádlo’s disc (with Václav Neumann conducting the Czech Philharmonic) accommodates both concertos on the same CD. His version of the B minor Concerto is excellent but my overall Collection recommendations of Angelica May and Pablo Casals still stands.