Mats Lidstrӧm: Swans

The Strad Issue: November 2025

Description: A flock of swans proves enchanting

Musicians: Mats Lidstrӧm (cello) Leif Kaner-Lidstrӧm (piano)

Works: Music by Arcadelt, de l’Aubergine, Barreto, Crusell, Ehrstrӧm, Farjeon, Fauré, Gibbons, Godowsky, Gottschalk, Grieg, Hahn, Mendelssohn, Palmgren, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Schubert, Stebbins, Szymanowski, Tchaikovsky, Tham and Villa-Lobos

Catalogue number: HYPERION CDA68475

Who would have thought so much music had been inspired by swans? Thanks to exhaustive research by London-based Swedish cellist Mats Lidström, we can now experience the whole gamut. His swans span the globe and traverse the centuries. We meet black swans, a swan leading us to the underworld and another looking at its reflection, almost always accompanied by the rippling of water.

All but five of the 24 tracks are arrangements by Lidström, and quite creative arrangements at that – in Crusell’s Svanen, he even adds a cello cadenza of music from the composer’s clarinet concertos. Double-stopped passages greatly enhance the eloquence of Gottschalk’s The Dying Swan and in the two Renaissance pieces Lidström decorates the melody in the style of a viol consort.

This is the first time Lidström has appeared on disc with his son Leif. There is a joyful, relaxed feel to their partnership, each instinctively moving with the other – and each, incidentally, contributing an original composition of their own.

Saint-Saëns’s Swan, full of feeling, with some beautiful gliding up to the top notes, opens the disc and ushers in a whole parade of swans, every one hallmarked by beauty of sound and warmth of interpretation, enhanced with a clear and immediate recording.

JANET BANKS