Playing a rare early eighteenth-century Domenico Montagnana cello, Truls Mork brings an unusual lyrical tenderness to these perennially popular concertos. He can certainly produce a big, gutsy tone where appropriate, as in his imposing initial entry in the C major work; and the agility of his bowing is never in question, as you can hear in the finale of the same concerto, where he responds eagerly to the dramatic and comic potential of Haydn's bravura episodes, with their wide leaps and staccato repeated notes. But what lingers in the mind is the delicacy and suppleness of Mork's cantabile phrasing and his beautiful range of colour in piano dynamics. Listen, for instance, to his veiled, dusky tone in the first-movement development of the C major from 3'59'', his sudden withdrawn pianissimo in the slow movement at 5'10'', the bow barely brushing the string, or his gravely eloquent shaping of the D major's Adagio. In fact, it's a long time since I've enjoyed the D major as much as this: the very leisurely first movement, with its (for Haydn) unusually slow harmonic rhythms, mingles elegance, animation and just the right degree of expressive freedom (rubato acutely judged, here as elsewhere) while the finale, which can be a lumbering bore, dances with a lithe, airy grace.
The expert Norwegian Chamber Orchestra accompany crisply and attentively, though oboes and horns get a slightly raw deal in the resonant church acoustic. Among the two dozen or so rival versions of these concertos (few, incidentally, offering more than a niggardly 50 minutes of music), several are outstanding, including the charismatic, slightly romanticized (and in the finale of the C major over-driven) reading by Rostropovich, the more restrained, classical performances by Heinrich Schiff and Yo-Yo Ma, and the two exhilarating period recordings from Christophe Coin and Anner Bylsma (Bylsma alone offers a third concerto, by Haydn's Esterhazy cellist Anton Kraft). But Mork can hold his own in such company; and in some moods I might well prefer his fresh, sweet-toned, uncommonly gracious performances before all others. Odd, though, that Virgin should be recycling at full price a disc issued a couple of years ago on the Simax label.'