Peter Quantrill
The Amati Magazine
September 2015

Steven Isserlis is more agile and adaptable than other cellists who have mixed and matched with a harpsichord in these sonatas … he never apologises for the full-bodied sound that is his instrument’s natural property … Isserlis is no less nimble than his gambist rivals in the trills and runs of the quick finales … of the three [Bach] sonatas, perhaps the D major behaves most like a ‘Classical’ sonata, and here questions of stylistic dissonance become irrelevant in the face of the confidence, not to say bravado, with which melody and harmony instruments trade semiquaver flourishes … the encore is no mere indulgence but a Bach chorale, Ich ruf zu dir BWV639, the arrangement of which is as sober as the performance is affectingly restrained.

The Amati Magazine