Vytautas Sondeckis - Romantic Music for Cello and Orchestra (2000)

Channel Classics gives us under-appreciated stellar talents in violinist Rachel Podger and cellist Peter Wispelwey, and Naxos offers parallels in violinist Michiko Kamiya and cellist Vytautas Sondeckis in its Laureate series. Sondeckis serves up a 60-minute box of assorted bonbons from eastern Europe here, with large ladles of expressive vibrato and the solid technical skills one might expect from the son of a distinguished cellist and student of David Geringas, himself a renowned cellist who ably conducts the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra in this recording. Much of the music is familiar: Tchaikovsky's Melody, Nocturne, and Andante Cantabile, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee and Serenade, and Rachmaninoff's Vocalise. Other pieces are less well-known - works by Davidov, Dvarionas and Taneyev, and a lush Shostakovich adagio arranged for cello and string orchestra by Atovmyan. The recording quality is exceptional and the price is rock-bottom, two features that make the Naxos label really distinctive in a vast sea of overpriced options.
Such sweet music isn't so chic these days, but hey, why not? In an era of kids with guns and impossible tensions in the Middle East, Africa, Ireland and elsewhere, this can only help to make the world a bit nicer. Maybe chic could use a rest.