The Strad Recommends: Andreas Brantelid: English Cello Works

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: April 2026

Description: A memorable and highly personal take on the Elgar Concerto

Musicians: Andreas Brantelid (cello) Bengt Forsberg (piano) Royal Danish Orchestra/Thomas Søndergård

Works: Bridge: Cello Sonata in D minor. Elgar: Cello Concerto; Salut d’amour. Ireland: Cello Sonata in G minor

Catalogue number: NAXOS 8573690

The much-recorded Swedish–Danish cellist Andreas Brantelid focuses on the desolate rather than the heroic in Elgar’s concerto – the loneliness of the first-movement theme and the vulnerability and hesitancy at the start of the second movement.

His Adagio is incredibly personal, almost desperate at times. Add to this Brantelid’s phenomenal technique and the beautiful sound of his 1707 ‘Boni-Hegar’ Stradivari and you have a truly memorable performance. The applause came as a complete surprise – there was absolutely no sense of it being a live recording, not least because there was not a single off note.

Two English sonatas written in the same period accompany the Elgar. In the Bridge, Brantelid takes subtlety in playing to a new level, with the exceptional recording capturing every nuance and the richness of his tone. The beauty of his vibrato on the pure, high notes stands out in the Adagio, and the way the sudden tempest dissipates into sunlight is magical.

Brantelid skilfully paints the mood behind the notes in Ireland’s G minor Sonata too. After all the searching in the first movement, the defiant ending is all the more moving, and the climax of the third movement, so reminiscent of Debussy’s Cello Sonata, is played with noble passion.

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