Jamie Walton

Jamie Walton

Jamie Walton has the world at his feet - or, more accurately, 30,000ft below him. The English cellist is currently flying around New Zealand on tour, having won huge international acclaim for his recent stunning disc of Elgar and Myaskovsky concertos.

It's a very brave Brit who risks recording such a totemic work as the Elgar, a piece linked indelibly with the late, great Jacqueline du Pré. Her impassioned 1965 recording remains the benchmark by which all others are measured. It's bizarre to discover, then, that the Knightsbridge house where Walton and I meet to talk before his Kiwi caper is next door to the one where Du Pré was nursed until her death from multiple sclerosis at the age of 42.

Walton's own distinctive and memorable interpretation of the Elgar has won over audiences and critics alike. It's evidence not only of the 33-year-old's willingness to take risks but also of a fiercely independent, some would say iconoclastic streak.

'I feel that the Elgar is too often sentimentalised'

As Times music critic Geoff Brown pointed out in his review, Walton 'very much follows his own star': 'His expression is clean and uncluttered, his musicianship unusually selfless. Only the music's will matters.'

'It's amazing that, when you do something like the Elgar, people see you in a new light,' smiles Walton. 'When I decided to record the piece, I knew I needed to say something different. When Du Pré recorded it, people tapped into what she was saying. But it's Du Pré and I don't hear Elgar,' he states, inviting controversy. 'I think it needs more purity and nostalgia. And the truth is that, since then, not many people have tried to say anything different with it.

'I feel that the Elgar is too often sentimentalised,' Walton goes on. 'It's about ardour, not passion, and I think it's more painful as a work than all its ebullience suggests. I knew I was going to be judged on this recording and I felt it was vital to do my homework. Jonathan Del Mar had just done some fantastic research and published his own edition of the concerto so I based my performance on that and stripped the piece right back. I like to express the core of the music before I express myself.

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