Elgar, Julian Lloyd Webber, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Yehudi Menuhin - Cello Concerto Op. 85 • "Enigma" Variations download free

If I could take just one piece of music with me on a desert island, it would be the Elgar cello concerto.I owe over ten versions of this concerto, on LP, CD and SACD, from the early 1928 recording with Beatrice Harrison and the LSO conducted by the composer himself, to the more recent version with Alisa Weilerstein. The “favourite" is, of course, a very personal choice, but as a classical music lover and student cellist this is the version of the Elgar cello concerto I go back to again and again, whether it is simply for the pleasure of listening or when I am studying the piece. To me, to date, this recording has known no equals.In 1986 Michael Kennedy - one of the world's two leading Elgar scholars - wrote an excellent review of the recording for Gramophone Magazine. Michael Kennedy was not the only critic to recognise the quality and uniqueness of the recording: Dr Jerrold Northrop Moore chose this 1985 recording of the Elgar Cello concerto as “finest ever version” for BBC Music Magazine.As far as Yehudi Menuhin conducting, well, he had recorded the Elgar violin concerto with Elgar himself conducting (also available on a very early Emi recording from 1932, I think), I think he knew very well what Elgar wanted to communicate through his music.If you are lucky enough to own the Elgar cello concerto with Julian Lloyd Webber on video, there is a lovely interview before the concert with Julian Lloyd Webber interviewing Yehudi Menuhin and asking him what memories he had of recording the violin concerto with Elgar. Menuhin replied that Elgar was of course a composer and just as his works were “a work of love” he was conducting like a gentleman. He was a Romantic at heart and in whatever he was doing, whether it was music, science, etc. This enormous passion was concealed behind his English nobility and it was in this way that he would communicate his love for the piece and within the piece to the soloist and the orchestra and ultimately to the audience.I think this can be said in the case of Menuhin conducting and Julian Llloyd Webber playing the Elgar cello concerto, too. Great command, tremendous passion but no aggression, no brutality at all.