Martinu Cello

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.

As Bohuslav Martinu gradually becomes better known in the west, his appealing chamber music is increasingly being performed and recorded, as it should be. This SACD of the three cello sonatas joins a respectable number of recordings that are available, though these exceptional performances by Steven Isserlis and Olli Mustonen are sure to give this album a higher profile in the marketplace.

Cellist Johannes Moser and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov present Bohuslav Martinů’s complete cello sonatas. These works belong to the most significant twentieth-century repertoire for cello and piano. Reflecting Martinů’s troubled existence, defined by wartime, emigration, longing for the homeland, yet also full of hope and life-affirming energy, the music seems entirely topical in our own troubled times. After their award-winning recording of works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff from 2016, Moser and Korobeinikov demonstrate their congeniality once more, fully realizing the extreme interdependence of cello and piano in these works.

Among his extensive chamber music output, Bohuslav Martinu left behind three magnificent cello sonatas, as well as a host of smaller works for cello and piano. Though not as extensively recorded as other standard repertoire works, there are some exemplary recordings of Martinu's sonatas, most notably the one made by Janos Starker and Rudolf Firkusný (who premiered the First Sonata with Fournier).

Each one of Bohuslav Martinů’s (1890-1959) three cello sonatas belongs to a significant period or event in his life. Composed in May 1939, the first seems indelibly marked by the tension and anxiety which gripped Europe in the months before war broke out, though the composer was also going through a crisis in his personal life, having lately had an intense extramarital affair with Vítězslava Kaprálová, a young composer and conductor.