Gramophone Magazine July 2015 Editor's Choice

Grieg’s sole Cello Sonata has long been a favourite of performers and audiences, if not of musical theorists, and here receives an impassioned vote of confidence from Steven Isserlis and Stephen Hough at the head of a programme which takes the listener forwards in time to Hough’s own Sonata for cello and piano left hand and back to Mendelssohn’s ever-popular Cello Sonata No 2. A spirit of passionate romanticism unifies the whole.

If any reminder were needed that Steven Isserlis is at the top of his game, this is it...Their opening Allegro agitato is a thrilling tour de force, Isserlis sinewy and febrile, Hough's sound lucid and full-bodied with an ideal recorded balance. BBC *****

everywhere their reading [of the Grieg] glints with conviction...Isserlis is matchless in the way he tugs at the simple melody to heart-rending effect...[The Hough is] unafraid to breathe an air of nostalgia...but the results are refreshingly personal...The performance couldn't be more persuasive and the two players are beautifully recorded. Gramophone