Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata

Yuja Wang joins her close friend and collaborator Gautier Capuçon to present a new recording of Rachmaninoff’s monumental Sonata for Piano and Cello. In four movements the sonata is filled with the character so typical of Russia’s Romantic era. Few composers before Rachmaninoff could have so deeply explored the cello’s capacity for expressive tenderness and intensity.

This new recording (recorded in 2012) brings together two great, but altogether different 20th century Cello Sonatas from Russia: the gorgeous and deeply romantic cello sonata by Rachmaninoff, of near‐symphonic proportions, and the cello sonata by Prokofiev, a hybrid piece of his later period, a fascinating mixture of the romantic, the grotesque and the introspective side of the multi-faceted composer..

The prize here is the Rachmaninoff cello sonata, a warm, hyper-Romantic musical tapestry that gives both the pianist and cellist a major workout. Ma is a superb chamber-music player, as is Ax. Both offer the kind of artistic give-and-take that a great performance of this music requires, while neither weighs the music down with excessive indulgence. The Prokofiev, a very different sort of musical beast, is a much lighter work, but it's done no less well. This is one of Ma's best chamber-music discs.

In September 2013 Anna performed Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto at the opening of the season of Sunday Morning Concerts series at the Great hall of the Royal Concertgebouw. Within two and a half a years, the recording of this concert received over 9 million views on YouTube and was highly praised among renown musicians. In November 2015 she returned to perform in the big hall of Concertgebouw in Sunday Morning Concerts series Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 3, this performance was again steamed live on TV, internet and radio.

Chopin and Rachmaninoff were both titans of the piano, which is why their cello sonatas are as much a feast for the keyboard as for the cello itself. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov bring their considerable experience in authentic performance to this album. For the Chopin, Melnikov uses a 19th-century French Erard piano, the type that might have been played at its premiere at a private Parisian soirée in 1847. Its rounder, subtler tones would have suited this environment, its translucency allowing Chopin’s complex piano lines to shine brighter than they would on a modern grand. Melnikov has the measure of this beautiful piano, never overwhelming the creamy tones that Queyras teases from his 1696 Gioffredo Cappa cello. For the Rachmaninoff, a bigger work in every sense, Melnikov reverts to a modern Steinway, its richer, forthright sound almost orchestral in comparison. Rachmaninoff’s sonata, directly influenced by Chopin’s, feels almost like a concerto in miniature and is performed with great élan.