Britten’s three Cello Suites have all the strength of musical character needed to sustain a permanent place in the repertory. Inspired by the personality, and technique, of Mstislav Rostropovich, they are remarkable for the way in which they acknowledge yet at the same time distance themselves from the great precedent of Bach’s Cello Suites. The best performers (like Rostropovich himself, though he has never recorded No. 3) are equally at ease with the music’s Bach-like contrapuntal ingenuity and its lyric intensity, where Britten’s own most personal voice is heard.
This new bargain-price CD from Jean-Guihen Queyras is challenged directly only by Tim Hugh on Naxos, and Queyras emerges the clear winner, if you agree that Hugh, for all his brilliance, forces the music into regions of dramatic expression which are foreign to it. By the same token, Queyras is less exciting than Hugh: marked pauses can be too long-drawn-out (the Bordone from Suite No. 1 is an example) and tempos are often on the slow side, as in the Fuga from Suite No. 2 and the Presto from No. 3. Yet Queyras has such a fine sense of phrase that the slower speeds do not normally sound unconvincing, and his playing – technically superb – has an impressive consistency of style.
The quality of the Harmonia Mundi recording is another plus, with the close focus needed to ensure that all the details tell, and the occasional tap of the bow and other non-musical noise an acceptable intrusion. My only disappointment came in the final track, with the Russian Prayer for the Dead that ends Suite No. 3. Here, of all places, Queyras is simply too fast, a miscalculation which is the more obvious when you compare him with Robert Cohen on his admirable full-price London release. Nevertheless, this lapse is not so great as to deprive the disc of a strong recommendation.'