Klengel

Brahms's two masterpieces for cello and piano are heard in new recordings by Emanuel Gruber and Arnon Erez. The Jerusalem Post wrote that Emanuel Gruber is "one of our great artists" citing "his extraordinary capacity for projecting the deepest meaning of the music". Awarded the Pablo Casals prize by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he also won the Concert Artists' Guild Auditions early in his career. Arnon Erez has performed in major concert halls, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Beethoven Halle in Bonn, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Musikverein in Vienna, Wigmore Hall in London and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Unlike many a young artist, Natalie Clein has resisted the temptation to rush into the recording studio at the earliest opportunity. That such patience has brought considerable dividends is evident from this impressive and well-recorded debut CD which boasts a particularly sensitive and beautifully shaped account of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. The work may not lie very easily on the cello, but Clein makes light work of its technical difficulties, delivering the brilliant passage work in its outer movements with an irresistible mixture of bravura and Viennese charm. Clein and her reliable partner Charles Owen also offer musically incisive accounts of the two Brahms sonatas.

• 55 CD original jacket, original couplings collection celebrating Maestro Riccardo Chailly’s 40 years on Decca
• Includes complete cycles of Beethoven, Brahms (x2), Schumann (x2), Bruckner and Mahler
• Featuring the orchestras with whom Chailly has been most closely associated: the Gewandhausorchester, the Royal Concertgebouw, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

Hyperion's Romantic Cello Concerto series continues to bring new works to light, expanding a repertoire that has long focused on a select group of composers. Here, Alban Gerhardt performs the three concertos by Hans Pfitzner. Pfitzner's early Cello Concerto in a minor was scorned by his teachers (although liked by the composer himself). His Cello Concerto Op.42 is a beautifully constructed work that derives it's material from a lyrical cello solo heard at the very start of the work. The Cello Concerto Op.52 is dedicated to Ludwig Hoelscher, a pupil of two giants of German cello-playing: Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel. As a bonus, the recording also includes Pfitzner's Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra.

Julius Röntgen was born on 9 May 1855 in Leipzig, the son of Dutch violinist Engelbert Röntgen, leader of the Gewandhausorchester there, and German pianist Pauline Klengel. He started composing at an early age and took the stage with his own works in Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Leipzig as a child prodigy. At the age of fifteen he was introduced to Franz Liszt, who invited him to one of his famous soirees after he played two of his own compositions to him.

After titanic contributions to the cello sonata repertoire by Ludwig van Beethoven, few notable additions were made for several decades. Not until 1862 did the cello sonata re-emerge in the hands of Johannes Brahms. His peculiar First Sonata contains only three movements (the Adagio having been omitted for fear of the sonata being too lengthy) and a finale that all but defies formal analysis. Almost a quarter century passed before Brahms again returned to the cello sonata, this time in the key of F major. The second sonata is considerably more challenging for cellists and Brahms' treatment of the instrument is not the exclusively lyrical, sonorous melodies that one might expect. Rather, Brahms incorporates lots of rhythmic, motivic playing and pizzicato passages and rapid bariolage. A "third" cello sonata, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, is Paul Klengel's (whose cello-playing father was much admired by Brahms) transcription of the G major Violin Sonata.