The Limelight Recording of the Month for August comes from Zlatomir Fung, in 2019, the youngest-ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition’s cello category.

His enthralling album of operatic fantasies for cello and piano involved mining the archives for 19th-century fare, while coming up with his own fantasia on themes from Janáček’s Jenůfa and getting to theatrical grips with a thoroughly modern meta take on the ever-popular Carmen.

Clive Paget caught up with the American cellist to find out more about the project and ask what does make a good fantasy?

What gave you the idea to do the album?

The idea came to me during the pandemic. I had an opportunity to do a livestream with a pianist friend of mine, and we were thinking of what would be artistically challenging and enriching for me, but also fun for listeners. I’ve always loved etudes written by great cellists, particularly those who lived in the 19th century. They’re mostly known among cellists for their pedagogical works but all of them also wrote concert music including opera fantasies. I was searching on IMSLP, which is a great resource for finding new works to play, and I found a couple, started practising them, and...