MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Dutilleux: Cello Concerto & Selected Orchestral Works

This is the third issue in Chandos's Dutilleux series with the BBC Phil and Yan Pascal Tortelier. The virtues of those earlier issues remain evident here, with meticulously prepared, well-played performances, and recordings carefully adapted to the coloristic subtlety and textural delicacy of the music. Métaboles is particularly tricky to bring off, but this version is admirable in the way it builds through some dangerously episodic writing to underline the power of the principal climaxes, though a more sharply delineated sound picture could have reinforced these contrasts even more appropriately. Boris Pergamenschikov is an eloquent soloist in the Cello Concerto. Tortelier's account of Mystère de l'instant - using a full orchestral complement of strings - is excellently done. As with Métaboles, the structure is shaped with great flexibility and feeling for its ebb and flow, and this emerges as a highly dramatic score, despite the inherent reticence of Dutilleux's style.