I first started to think seriously about the late Jacqueline du Pré when I saw the Woolf/Vavrek opera Jacqueline in 2020 at Tapestry.  Subsequently I listened to the CD release and attended the remount at Tapestry in February this year.  Then I saw that all of her concerto recordings for HMV (back catalogue now owned by Warner Classics) made between 1965 and 1970 had got a major facelift along the lines of the Solti Ring.  The original analogue tapes have been digitized at 192kHz/24 bit using the latest technology and then remastered for SACD.  The result is a four hybrid SACD box set called The Great Cello Concertos.

As best I can tell what we have here were originally eight LPs comprising 280 minutes of music.  The obvious recordings are included.  There’s the Elgar with Sir John Barbirolli and the LSO which established her reputation and is still considered the “gold standard” by many people.  There’s the Delius with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the RPO which is really lovely.  There are recordings made with her husband Daniel Barenboim and four different orchestras.  These include really good versions of the Schumann and Dvorak concertos.

There’s less familiar material as well including two Haydn concertos, the Saint-Saëns, the Lalo, the Boccherini and one I’d never heard of by Georg Matthias Monn.  Most of these recordings have been written about umpteen times and rereleased in a variety of formats and combinations so I imagine many readers will have at least some of these recordings.  And with so much information about these performances available I don’t feel the need to repeat what has been said before.  Let’s just state the obvious; they are very individual, some would say eccentric, and quite compelling.

Why buy this release?  It’s the first time they have been available in anything like this sort of resolution and they do sound really good.  It’s stereo only of course; no surround track.

Catalogue information: Warner Classics 2173252029