Dvořák disliked the cello as soloist: “it sounded too much like muttering.” That dismissal attacks the very quality people generally love most about the instrument: its resemblance to the human voice. But in Steven Isserlis’s recording of the B Minor Cello Concerto, the composer would have been swept away by the gamut of human expression in the soloist’s playing – from singing lyricism to bold exhortations and, yes, even some throaty muttering employed to great effect.

Though he rises to the occasion in the big, bombastic moments of this Romantic warhorse, Isserlis comes at it, as everything else, from a sensitive standpoint. The first cello entry is more direct, more textured and quite a lick faster than Jacqueline Du Pré’s benchmark.

Intonation is thrillingly pinpoint, every phrase precisely placed, even in the fierce double stops of the first movement and the breakneck filigree of the third. The sound of the 1726 Stradivarius Isserlis chose to record with gives a deep, burnished tone, yet there is a lightness to the touch, especially for the Allegro’s staccato folkdance passages. The thrusting thirdmovement theme gives way to a series of trills that are powerfully focused without losing finesse and delicacy. Lightness is also the key to the success of the...