Have you ever wanted to hear Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons suite with the bandoneon accompanied by six cellos and string bass? Here’s your chance, and it sounds bloody great! Under Werner Thomas-Mifune’s idiomatic leadership, the Philharmonische Cellisten wrap their fingers around the composer’s smoky syntax as if they’ve invented modern tangos. Bandoneon soloist Alfredo Marcucci’s brilliant, impassioned playing is complemented by the cellists’ moaning slides and stabbing chords. Thomas-Mifune appropriates the original violin part for himself, wailing like a fiend in the high register. The 12 piano pieces comprising Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons gain lyrical and harmonic dimension through the eyes of six cellos. My only criticism is that Thomas-Mifune’s arrangements are sometimes too literal vis-à-vis the original piano textures. The gently propulsive chordal accompaniment in the “April” movement, for instance, doesn’t translate well to bowed cellos and winds up sounding too heavy for the music’s buoyant, lyrical sentiments. However, this has nothing to do with the high quality of the playing, and if you love massed cellos, you’ll simply have to possess this disc. Yummy stuff.
