Steven John Isserlis is one of the leading internationally ranked cellists. He plays a wide range of repertory and is noted for using gut strings and a great deal of vibrato. He is the grandson of Russian composer and pianist Julius Isserlis and can trace his family tree back to connections with both Karl Marx and Felix Mendelssohn. He spent most of his teenage years (1969-1976) at the International Cello Centre as a pupil of Jane Cowan,who required her students to read Goethe's Faust in order to understand Beethoven better and memorize Racine to know the sound of the language when playing French music.

This is a very enjoyable program of some really worthwhile music. Glazunov's superb violin concerto from 1905 is a conservative, melodic work, but a splendid one whose popularity is definitely well deserved. Gil Shaham's approach is also rather conservative, but in the best sense of the word. The playing is beautifully phrased, warm-toned and romantic, and it is excellently supported by the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev. No, Shaham does not really provide any new insights, but as a library version of the work this is, I assume, possibly the best you could do.

Emil Gilels was renowned for playing Beethoven, like his predecessors Artur Schnabel, Wilhelm Backhaus and Rudolf Serkin. He made his name in his native land as promoter of Russian music - that of Rachmaninov, of course (still revered despite his exile in America), Prokofiev, the prodigal son harshly punished on his return to the Soviet Union and Kabalevsky, the epitome of professionalism and popular music. Here you can enjoy a unique triptych, which studiedly sheers away from Svjastoslav Richter’s repertoire.

If you are unfamiliar with the music of Kabalevsky, this is a great place to start. Kabalevsky's music is very melodic and extremely accessable. He wrote at the same time as Prokofiev and Shostakovich and his music has the immediate appeal of all the other Russian masters of the late 19th and early to mid twentieth centuries.
His Cello Concertos are especially wonderful - but as a starting point. Check out his Piano concertos and his Symphonies as well. This recording of the Cello Concertos is beautifully played by Alexander Rudin and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.