An Ideal Pairing Brahms cello sonatas - heard by JULIAN JACOBSON '... honourable, fluent and enjoyable playing ...'

Brahms' two cello sonatas make an ideal pairing, the intense inner psychological drama of No 1 being balanced — almost exorcised — by the powerful, confident, epic sweep of No 2, written more than twenty years later. They have unsurprisingly been taken up by almost all the great cellists, so that any new version needs to have something special to offer. Despite much honourable, fluent and enjoyable playing, this recording doesn't quite manage that.

The first Sonata, the E minor Op 38, opens as persuasively as one would wish, capturing the music's darkness and also its Bachian gravitas...

JOHANNES BRAHMS

MSR CLASSICS

CELLO MUSIC

PIANO MUSIC

CHAMBER MUSIC

GERMANY

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA