Convenient as it is to have all Tchaikovsky's works for cello and orchestra (and a few more arrangements for the medium) on a single disc; taken in a single sitting it is only recommended as a cure for the terminally happy. Moments of brilliance and even of high spirits in the Rococo Variations and Pezzo capriccioso aside, Tchaikovsky's pervasive brand of melancholic cantabile is more satisfyingly (and thought provokingly) interspersed with morceaux from Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov on a Virgin Classics disc with Steven Isserlis, John Eliot Gardiner and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
This is Ofra Harnoy's second recording of the Rococo Variations. Her first (also on RCA) recorded in Canada in 1984 with a smaller body of musicians more intimately balanced than the new London recording, gave an aptly eighteenth-century feel to the piece, though the close solo balance occasionally masked detail in the orchestra. We are still closer to her here than to Isserlis (who uses the 'original' version with its different ordering and extra variation), or to Rostropovich with Karajan on DG. Microphone positioning certainly allows her to project plenty of character and contrast; whether playful, soulful or passionate, this comes over as a more extrovert account of the solo part than Isserlis's. Her playing has also acquired extra finish since the first recording; those semi- and demisemiquavers of the final variation are now more securely in her grasp, if still without Rostropovich's effortless control. She doesn't quite match his seamless sostenuto in the Andante of the third variation either, and there is an edit near the end of this, where (at 8'16'') decay on the final woodwind chord is cut short. The balance is a mixed blessing in the succeeding variation, which lacks Rostropovich's grace and delicacy; here the articulation is revealed as a little stiff.
To a very dreamy Andante cantabile Mackerras and the LPO strings provide the softest of featherbed accompaniments. This is gorgeous, with an acoustic bloom and suffusing warmth absent from Isserlis's Virgin disc. He and Gardiner are, though, considerably more stylish and capricious in the Pezzo capriccioso, accomplished as Harnoy is here. Jacob Harnoy's orchestrations of ''October'' from The seasons and the Valse sentimentale are idiomatically and sensitively done, as is his arrangement of Lensky's aria, but I have my doubts about the Serenade melancolique (originally for violin). It may be the close solo balance again, but horns and woodwind playing in similar registers are not always as clear as they should be. Besides, the piece sounds under-rehearsed, with uncertain pitching from both solo and orchestral strings, particularly in the largamento section from 4'20''.'