Tim Hugh - Boccherini: Cello Concertos, Vol. 1 (1999)

This disc is a winner, the first of a series of all 12 Boccherini cello concertos, beautifully performed on modern instruments but with concern for period practice and superbly recorded.
Each concerto has its individual delights, but the formula in all four works is similar, with strong, foursquare first movements, slow movements that sound rather Handelian, and galloping finales in triple time.
Many collectors will be concerned about the Boccherini Cello Concerto beloved of generations in Grützmacher's corrupt edition. Many years ago Jacqueline du Pré was questioned about choosing it for her recording: she promptly justified herself, saying, 'But the slow movement is so lovely.' She was quite right, as her classic recording makes clear, but that movement was transferred from another work, in fact No 7 in G, one of the four works here.
Tim Hugh's dedicated account of this lovely G minor movement is a high spot of this issue, with rapt, hushed playing not just from the soloist but also from the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Anthony Halstead. Hugh offers substantial cadenzas not just in the first movements of each work, but in slow movements and finales too, though none is as extended as the almost two minute meditation in the G minor slow movement. Halstead, as a period specialist and a horn virtuoso as well as a conductor, matches his soloist in the dedication of these performances, clarifying textures and encouraging Hugh to choose speeds on the fast side, with easily flowing slow movements and outer movements which test the soloist's virtuosity to the very limit, without sounding breathless.
Not just for those who know only the old Grützmacher concerto, all this will be a delightful discovery.