Dvořák/Schumann: Cello Concertos/Casals: El Cant dels Ocells review – An impulsive, refined lyricism

This is the debut album from Pablo Ferrández, 23 this year and a former teen prodigy, whose parents named him Pablo after Casals and who was, by all accounts, an accomplished cellist at three. He's a fine performer, with a warm tone and an impulsive, if refined, lyricism that makes him a natural interpreter for Schumann's concerto, with its melancholy elegance and flashes of mercurial wit. The Dvořák is less successful. The poetic quality of Ferrández's playing is never in doubt, but speeds and orchestral dynamics are occasionally extreme, and conductor Radoslaw Szulc – so eloquent in the Schumann – is solemn rather than noble in places here. Casals's own Catalan folk-song arrangement, El Cant dels Ocells, beautifully done, is both encore and tribute to a lifelong hero.