Stephen Pritchard 

Bloch: Voice in the Wilderness; Caplet: Epiphanie; Ravel: Kaddish – review

Raphael Wallfisch's gloriously rich cello lines stand out on an intensely personal recording dedicated to family members who perished in Nazi death camps, writes Stephen Pritchard
  
  


This is an intensely personal disc, released in advance of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. Cellist Raphael Wallfisch and his conductor son Benjamin dedicate this recording to family members who perished in the camps, and follows a Kristallnacht concert given in Vienna last year by Raphael and his mother, 88-year-old cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of Auschwitz and founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra. There is some exquisite music-making here; the Welsh players excel in Bloch's Voice in the Wilderness and Schelomo, underpinning Raphael's gloriously rich, sonorous solo lines. And André Caplet's sparkling Epiphanie makes an enchanting counter to Kaddish, Ravel's deeply felt homage to Jewish melody.

 

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