Eto Bieri And Meta4*, Johannes Brahms Gérard Pesson Salvatore Sciarrino – Quasi Morendo

Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel celebrate twenty years together as a cello and piano duet. It is hardly surprising that they chose to mark this anniversary with the music of Brahms, a composer who has been a constant on their beautiful journey together. Beyond his two ultra-romantic sonatas, they take listeners to an even deeper emotional realm, with his lieder, splendidly "sung" by the cello!

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Each disc of this Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented in chronological order but they do appear here in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through the repertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be presented in its entirety (in the case of this disc, Op 48). The folksongs of 1894 will be shared between all the singers in the series.

In every way these perceptive and well-detailed readings stand in competition with the finest.