Music packed with character, brought to life by a cello hero and his family

Nobody could ever accuse Mischa Maisky of being timid or reserved. The cosmopolitan Israeli cellist’s heart-on-sleeve emotional honesty burns in every bar of these performances, recorded live at the Verbier Festival. He’s joined by two of his children and by long-term duo partner Martha Argerich in what amounts to a celebration of gloriously uninhibited artistry.

Anyone wanting an intoxicating measure of it should head straight to the central movement of Grieg’s Cello Sonata in A minor, the searing romantic warmth of which would surely melt all the glaciers of its Norwegian composer’s homeland. In Strauss’ epic picaresque tone poem Don Quixote, Maisky evokes memories of his teacher and mentor Mstislav Rostropovich by painting a profoundly human portrait of the legendary knight errant, backed to the hilt by the Verbier Festival Orchestra’s young musicians.