Home listening - Malcolm Sargent conducts Elgar, and Fabio Biondi unearths another baroque gem

The Guardian 0

Jacqueline du Pré’s Proms debut is a revelation on Pristine Classics; and let’s hear it for Francesco Feo

• Sounds we thought had disappeared: the growth of historical recordings being issued on CD has been a most worthwhile recent trend. They provide a benchmark against which to measure our memory of the past. I vividly remember being taken, while on a choirboy summer school, to a Prom rehearsal to hear the young Jacqueline du Pré in the Elgar Cello Concerto. Now here is the tape of her Proms debut on 14 August 1962, aged 17, with Malcolm Sargent and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Pristine Audio; 2 CDs). What is totally gripping is the concentrated focus of Du Pré’s playing, with no wide vibrato, superbly projected. There’s a simplicity of utterance that one doesn’t always find in her later, more ample recordings of the work.