Sheku Kanneh-Mason – Elgar (180g Vinyl 2LP)

Award-winning British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason presents Elgar, a brand new album of works anchored around the English composer’s Cello Concerto, arguably the best-known work in the classical canon written for solo cello, which was first performed 100 years ago in 1919. Sheku recorded the Cello Concerto at Abbey Road Studios (famously opened by Elgar himself in 1931) with the internationally-renowned London Symphony Orchestra and its celebrated Music Director, conductor Sir Simon Rattle. For his latest album Sheku uses Elgar’s iconic work as a lens through which to explore the wider musical landscape of pre-and post-war Europe. New arrangements of Elgar’s powerful and ubiquitously British “Nimrod” from his Enigma Variations, and “Romance In D Minor” are also featured here. Sheku recorded many of the chamber works alongside his cello friends and colleagues, as well as his brother Braimah Kanneh-Mason who plays violin on Bloch’s “Prayer.”

1. Trad. – Blow The Wind Southerly
2. Elgar – Nimrod from Enigma Variations
3. Elgar – Cello Concerto In E Minor
4. Elgar – Romance In D minor
5. Bridge – Spring Song
6. Trad. – Scarborough Fair (with Plinio Fernandes)
7. Bloch – Prélude
8. Bloch – Prayer (with Braimah Kanneh-Mason)
9. Fauré – Élégie In C Minor
10. Klengel – Hymnus For 12 Cellos