UKH

Can't get much more high brow than that (or at least I can't).

I really like the sound of a cello and piano together, but I've hardly listened to any of the great cello sonatas, of which there must be stacks.

I really like this famous Schubert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNcQuY1isEI&ab_channel=ChristophMarotzk...

And Chopin can do no wrong, ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3thZnim4jY&ab_channel=GstaadMenuhinFes...

The Beethoven at the start of the recently aired Barenboim documentary was fantastic too, must listen to that again.

What other classics or personal favourites of this genre should I be getting to know? My own tastes aren't particularly adventurous, but I'm always interested in whatever people rate as truly brilliant.

I know bog all about the cello, but I really liked the film Hillary and Jackie about Jacqueline du pre. Have you seen it? It might give a few ideas.

No cheers, I'll have a look for that. Those kind of films aren't always easy to get online, someone recommended one about tuning pianos for the great performances of brendel and others, but I couldn't get my hands on it. Looked like a nice watch though. 

I've no idea if they are sonatas or not, but Arvo Pärt's 'Fratres' and 'Spiegel im Spiegel' for piano and cello do it for me.

youtube.com/watch?v=FZe3mXlnfNc&

youtube.com/watch?v=TK0mxSskXSQ&

Have you heard Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo cello?

They have been a spiky on-off friend of mine for over 30 years.

Many versions. My favourite is Yo-Yo Ma's, but there are many I haven't heard. 

I was introduced to them by my landlord, in Bristol, who described an occasion when Rostropovich once played one of them just to him.

I think Rostropovich plays the beginning of No. 1 too fast. 

If you like them, you'll probably also like the sibling pieces for violin, in which my favourite version is those of Perlman, and favourite part is the chaconne, which takes some grit to listen to through to the end.

If you come to either of these from more crowded misic they  just seem to be so spare, direct and awesome. But taxing. Which is why, probably, I after a while fall off the wagon and end up listening to something like Powerage.

Are they different to the cello suites then?

Great description here from Michael Pollan of listening to no.2 in D minor on an enormous dose of magic mushrooms:

youtube.com/watch?v=LcAj1oxMT9U&t=1895

Maybe not. I always get the two muddled.

Haydn and Elgar - Du Pre and Barenboim.

Steve

It'll be the suites, hours and hours of incredible music. I only know the famous bits though. Poor Bach never had a piano and had to make do with a shitty harpsichord, but there's probably loads of Bach recorded for cello and piano now.

Beautiful thanks - I always assume anything modern is going to be really difficult and dissonant, couldn't be further from the truth there.

Beethoven's are brilliant. Rostropovich and Richter. They have such fun, mischievous entertaining and inspiring. I can't remember which last movement, they deliberately play it as fast as possible, which caused a lot of outcry

Search Sheku Kanneh-Mason. He won young musician of the year in 2016, also the whole family is very talented (and still very young).

More generally, if you want to push yourself a bit you could have a go at the solo Britten cello suites; not for everyone, but usually survive a random play by my music gadget without being nexted!

My absolute favourite cello music is the Bach cello suites, and the best performer imho is Tortelier, who brings a discipline and authority that other great performers sometimes lack. One or two of them make me cry in that way that only Bach can do.

Your mileage may vary, but enjoy!

ff

Zoltan Kodaly Opus 8 cello sonata, probably best played by Janos Starker but I have the Natalie Clein version. More modern than all the previous sonatas mentioned, very powerful. But it's hard to find duff cello music anyway!

Recommendations from the cellist in this short piece by Clara Schumann:
youtube.com/watch?v=-Inr8vVVYFE&

Rachmaninov Cello Sonata

Saint Saens Cello Sonatas played by Stephen Isserlis

Faure Cello Sonata no.2

Schumann Fantasiestucke for cello

For a revelatory take on the Bach Cello Suites, have you heard Rachel Podger performing them on violin? Brilliantly different, I think.

On the subject of the solo violin partitas, I was lucky enough to be on the front row a few feet from Nicola Benedetti performing two of them - including the G minor with the Chaconne - in the round at Birmingham Town Hall. One of the most intense live music experiences I've had.

You can get Pianomania from well known auction site £7.50 delivered. It will be in German without subtitles though 

Or you can get it from the USA for about £24 delivered. Or Amazon is listing a used copy for around £13 delivered but I cannot tell whether it is the German-only DVD. 


Or it's here although I don't know if you have to pretend to be in the USA to view. 

https://www.fandor.com/films/pianomania

No, but thanks. I will give that a try. [edit: I've listened to #1 and it's brilliant.]

I did see Steven Isserlis do one or two (I don't remember) of the cello suites at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge in 84/85. I was sat just a few feet from him. That performance, and then seeing Richard Thompson perform solo in some sweaty basement within a few weeks of it gave me an affinity for solo music that still remains.

Max Bruch, Kol Nidrei, e.g. in the old Decca recording with Janos Starker.

Thanks for those! Both look like really good ways to spend lockdown time.

Thanks for all these interesting recommendations - so much to explore! I often come back to these threads months or years later, they're a great resource when I find myself listening to the same few things over and over (mostly Schubert and Chopin solo piano, and Mozart and Beethoven quartets).

..but if you were stuck with those, what a thing to be stuck with.

The last time my Dad and I spoke, by phone as I was abroad, I was, when he rang, listening to Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia playing Schubert and Mozart duets.

When he died, shortly afterwards, I had the recording of Lupu playing the first movement of Schubert D 894 at his funeral, and it still makes me well up whenever I hear it. We'd been to see him together. Extraordinary music.

Good prompt, we have just listened to the Bach Suites and I'd forgotten how good and inventive they are.

Off on a pop-culture tangent, check out Samara Ginsberg’s YouTube channel 😃

I'd recommend Ofra Harnoy's Vivaldi Cello Concertos (4 albums) and sonatas. I'll make a point of listenening to at least one album a week if not more. Beautiful music beautifully played. 

If you watch Pianomania you should also get Bach's Art of Fugue by Pierre Laurent Aimard, as part of the film shows the process of recording that CD.

No cellos, but still great!

CB

Shostakovich wrote a very fine cello sonata. From the 20th century I would also mention Prokofiev Britten and Miaskovsky. The very fine sonata by Rachmaninov has already been mentioned.

There's a lifetime of music in those Schubert piano sonatas. I can't imagine what it must be like to be able to play one and experience the music actually being manifest in your body, not just passively going in through your ears - it must be transcendent, particularly if an audience is totally captivated, sharing the experience.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Hi Jon, there aren’t as many cello sonatas as there should be IMHO. I suspect that composing for these two instruments is rather difficult because it isn’t easy to make them equal partners. Even Beethoven’s early stabs are not considered much more than mediocre because the piano is so dominant. But his 3rd 4th and 5th are all masterworks.

Hear are a few more which you might like. Grieg, a much underrated composer, wrote a delightful example. Brahms wrote two, which I haven’t heard for a long time, though they were on one of my earliest vinyl purchases. I recall them as being very passionate, as is the Rachmaninov mentioned above. Perhaps less well known is that by Debussy, which has some typically fiendish writing in it. A few years back I heard it live at Yewfield. It was a very exciting and brilliant performance and remembered with pleasure. It is undoubtedly my favourite in the genre and my cd where it’s coupled with the Rach and played by the talented one of the Lloyd Webber boys is a favourite. 
Happy listening.

Rog

I have no idea why, as I am not deep into this at all, but somehow Mendelssohn pops into my brain when I read "cello". I don't even know his cello work! But hey ho. You may or may not enjoy. I make no recommendation

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/mendelssohn-cello-sonatas

Obviously solo Bach is a must. Casals or Rostropovich for me!

However, if you want something a little different then listen to  Jodi Savall playing Diego Ortiz. The Recercadas are excellent! 

I bet they're good. I've only heard a few bits of Mendelssohn, his brilliant octet and some solo piano stuff. I have him down as the guy who thought that all the new fangled experimental stuff of his time was bollocks, and thought he knew how to write "proper music" - which he really did. 

Strangely, although Chopin sounds totally Romantic to me, and he didn't write in the "classical style" - he came up with bizarre stuff like a set of 24 Preludes that aren't preludes to anything, and the 4 Scherzi which are nothing like what a "scherzo" is in anyone else's book, apparently he only liked Bach and Mozart, and thought all his contemporaries were shite (even Schubert - gasp!).

Thanks for those, I was waiting for your post!

One day I will try the Debussy - at the mo I find his sophisticated/wishy-washy harmonies go over my head a bit.

Hi,

Brahms' sonatas - mentioned above - are played here by Jacqueline Du Pré* & Daniel Barenboim: youtube.com/watch?v=4mdFVO1Nyv4&

Webern's cello & piano works are quite adventurous but this early one seems fairly conventional: 2 Pieces for cello and piano (1899) youtube.com/watch?v=iwIgmecVTGk&

Thanks,
R

* Jacqueline Du Pré is the focus of several Allegro films:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2GsQ52UqrOf_uPRajOJjmorgcyVyXZ_U
 

Edit: "&" seems to have been added to the end of some of the URLs ...

Well, there's a turn up for the books, something we agree on!

Funnily enough I was listening to this yesterday

youtube.com/watch?v=452nsCCzIJs&

Beethoven's triple concerto, it has the piano and cello together that you like with a violin thrown in for good measure.

Ok so it's a concerto not a sonata but still . . . .

In addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, you should look out for the Cello Sonata by Charles-Valentin Alkan. This is an unjustly neglected work by the rather eccentric 19th century Frenchman more noted for his piano works.

I suppose I'm being boringly conventional, but I think Bach's Cello Suites are in the number one position, without equal for apparent simplicity (i.e. subtlety) combined with profundity. (Actually, the solo sonatas for flute are the ultimate in this respect). Here's a fun version of the 1st Cello Suite, but played with six cellos:  youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4BzonlVlw&

Ah! The power of music to bring people together Off topic for cellos, but here's a favourite clip of the amazing Scherzo no.3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU3eMoR4hso&ab_channel=ChopinInstitute

Magnificent, thanks.

... played by one of the greatest pianists in the world today ...

Drifting further from the sonata, but with even more cellos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgKcBR_C7PI&ab_channel=medici.tv

A snatch of the first cello suite brought to us here by Yo-Yo Ma at a vaccination waiting room

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2021/mar/14/yo-yo-ma-plays-cello-...

I don't know what the first piece is.

I think it's Gounod's Ave Maria - here magically combined by Yo-You Ma with Kathryn Stott playing Bach's opening Prelude, of the 48 Preludes and Fugues, on the piano. Advanced warning: this is off the scale of wonderful.

youtube.com/watch?v=hyUhEjtlDLA&

Thank you. That is lovely.

They have that on their album Songs from the Arc of Life. Super duper wonderful.