Concertos for cor anglais are few and far between, and harp concertos aren’t very common either. In combining the two, Kalevi Aho has come up with a true rarity – possibly the only double concerto in existence for these two instruments. Composed in 2014, the work was commissioned by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra for two of its solo players: Anneleen Lenaerts and Dimitri Mestdag, who also perform it here. The work is characteristically eclectic, making the most of the sonic possibilities of the solo instruments, but also of the orchestral palette. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra is no newcomer to Aho’s music, having previously recorded his concertos for trombone and trumpet. On the present disc, it also provides support for the Storioni Trio, in the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and chamber orchestra, a joint commission by the trio and the orchestra. In 2017, as Aho started work on the concerto, his granddaughter was born. Having written a lullaby for her, he decided to use that as the core melodic material of the piece. The lullaby is heard several times in the first movement, which is quite tonal and very dreamlike. It also features in the movements that follow, while the harmonic language becomes more complex. Aho himself describes the work as having ‘a general atmosphere full of joy and positive (sometimes quite virtuosic) energy.’

REVIEW:

The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho is amazingly prolific. Not only are there, so far, seventeen symphonies and five operas, but also no fewer than thirty-seven concertos. Here we have two of them.

The Double Concerto for cor anglais and harp begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my player while sounds like background noises started emerging. However, the two solo instruments do enter and gradually the work gathers definition and then rhythmic bite. There is a cadenza for the two instruments before the music subsides. This first movement is as long as the remaining three together. The second movement is a short cadenza for the harp alone, a most attractive passage, which leads into a brisk and exciting allegro. The finale is again short and quiet and we return to something like the mood of the beginning.

The Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano is a more traditional combination, and the listener will at once think of Beethoven’s concerto for the same combination. Aho is obviously aware of this and does something quite different. For a start he uses a chamber orchestra, with strings and just two wind instruments. He rarely employs his soloists as a group together, but writes more in the concerto grosso kind of idiom, with a good deal of interplay between the soloists and the orchestra. If this sounds rather like Martinů, this is deliberate, and I was several times reminded of the Czech master in hearing this work. It is based on a lullaby he wrote for his granddaughter Matilda, which used the musical letters in her name. This comes several times in the dreamy and atmospheric first movement. This is followed by an energetic Presto, then another mysterious slow movement and a finale which starts slowly but soon speeds up.

The performers here are a mainly Belgian team, and they were all involved in the premieres apart from the conductor, who on those occasions was Martyn Brabbins, who has had quite a close association with Aho’s music. For whatever reason, he is not the conductor here, and that role is taken by the Estonian Olari Elts. He does a good job and secures confident performances. The sleevenote, in four languages is helpful. This is a SACD but I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo, in which the sound was immaculate. BIS has been supporting Aho for a long time and this latest issue is a worthy addition to their series. Aho’s fans need not hesitate, and those curious about trying this composer could well dip a toe in here.

-- MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works. These were written especially for Mühlfeld, whose spirit does seem to pervade the two sonatas – we hear an unusually sunny and lyrical Brahms, with plenty of opportunity to sing for both instruments. When the sonatas were published, they appeared with alternative viola parts to replace the clarinet, and soon violin versions prepared by the composer were also brought out. For the opening work on the disc, Michael Collins has therefore taken a leaf out of Brahms’s book, by adapting the composer’s Violin Sonata No. 2, another late work. The amount of adaptation needed is small: a lot of the violin writing fits the clarinet well, and the sonata share much of the songlike quality of the two ‘real’ clarinet sonatas.

REVIEW:

Clarinetist Michael Collins must have lived with the two Op. 120 sonatas for all his professional career. That seems abundantly clear from his superb playing in both of those sonatas. His Brahmsian experience is also evidenced by his highly persuasive and idiomatic adaptation of Op 110. As for Stephen Hough, his Brahms credentials are well known, not least for his splendid recordings of the piano concertos (review) and, more recently, of the late piano pieces (review). It was a great idea to bring these two fine musicians together for this project and the idea has paid off handsomely.

The production values are high. The recorded balance is ideal and the instruments are reproduced truthfully. I listened to the stereo layer of this SACD and was very satisfied with the results. As I’ve already indicated, Stephen Johnson’s essay is excellent.

This is a disc which will grace any Brahms collection.

-- MusicWeb International

At the age of 20, Henry Purcell entered his 14 Fantasias and two In Nomines into an autograph bearing the title ‘The Works of Hen; Purcell, A.D. 1680’. Despite his youth Purcell was already making his mark as a composer, writing music for the London theatres and holding posts at Westminster Abbey and at court. But unlike his works for the theatre and the church, which were intended for specific occasions, very little is known about the impulse behind fantasias. Composed for between three and seven parts they are a consciously anachronistic distillation of an old style at a time when the reigning taste was for more modern sounds – for dance-based music with lively rhythms and hummable tunes. It isn’t even clear what kind of ensemble they were intended for: given the association with older music, one might assume that Purcell had viols in mind, but the distribution of the parts is not always in keeping with the standard sizes of the viol consort – nor for that matter those of the violin consort.

Were the fantasias in fact ever performed? None of these questions has a satisfactory answer, and in this respect the Purcell Fantasias resemble Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, because of their quality and inventiveness but also owing to the mysteries that surround them. The collection is here performed by Chelys Consort of Viols, following up on three previous and acclaimed releases on BIS featuring the music of Michael East, John Dowland, and Christopher Simpson.

REVIEW:

The Chelys readings, clean and rather circumspect, merit strong consideration for those interested in these youthful and intellectual Purcell works. Nicely recorded by BIS at Girton College Chapel, Cambridge, they don't overdo the mystery: the sound is clean and the polyphony clear. The pungent dissonances scattered through these works, which were a feature of the tradition (not just of Purcell's pieces), emerge with the proper emphasis, but the Consort does not lean into them unnecessarily.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Bach was renowned as a keyboard player as well as being an accomplished violinist, but as far as we know he didn't play the lute. He seems to have been fascinated by the instrument’s special sound qualities, however, and was clearly inspired by the possibilities of the Lautenwerk. This was a gut-strung harpsichord designed to imitate the sound of the lute and at least some of the works usually referred to as ‘the Bach Lute Suites’ were probably composed for this instrument. Jakob Lindberg recorded the complete suites in 1992. Returning to the composer almost three decades later, he does so in the company of his Rauwolf lute, an instrument built in Augsburg around 1590 and ‘modernized’ in 1715, during Bach’s lifetime. But this time, only two of the works belong to the standard lute repertoire – the Prelude BWV 999 and the Suite BWV 1006a, which in fact is the composer’s own arrangement of his Partita No. 3 for solo violin. For the remaining works on the disc Lindberg has taken the cue from Bach, making arrangements of Cello Suite No.1 and Sonata No. 1 for solo violin in full. He has also chosen individual movements from other solo works, including the highly complex fugue from Sonata No. 3 for solo violin. The amply filled album (88 minutes!) closes with the iconic Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor.

On this transatlantic album, three American composers born during the first half of the last century rub shoulders with two young musicians from Eastern Europe. A member of the BBC New Generation Artists scheme, the violinist Aleksey Semenenko first met the pianist Artem Belogurov at the Stolyarsky Special Music School in Odessa at an early age. Even if their individual careers have taken to different parts of the world, the two still perform together whenever possible, and here they present three sonatas. Of the composers, the best-known is André Previn who composed his Violin Sonata No. 2 in 2011 for Anne-Sophie Mutter. An improvisatory spirit permeates the work which is in three movements with the markings Joyous, Desolate and Brilliant. Tony Schemmer and Paul Gay are both based in the Boston area and share a background in which jazz and classical genres merge. This is reflected in their sonatas, composed in the 1980s and here appearing on disc for the first time.

REVIEWS:

My tastes in repertoire generally stop with the mid-20th century and I don’t take an active interest in contemporary work. Perhaps that very fact indicates why I responded so favorably to Crossroads: American Violin Sonatas, for here are three composers—two of them still living—who continue the craftsmanship, seriousness of purpose, and tonal communicativeness of the best mid-20th-century American music. These sonatas offer no Postmodern spoofery, nor avant-garde aural assaults. All three composers deftly mix popular elements with their classical technique yet in a way that is integral and natural.

The performances of the Ukrainian musicians are faultless and idiomatic, as is the recorded sound. This delightful disc afforded some new discoveries for me and comes strongly recommended.

-- Fanfare

Semenenko and his duo partner present premiere recordings of jazz-influenced sonatas written in the 1980s. The Schemmer is a particularly joyful discovery.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos (‘poems’) by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo. The collection first appeared in 1835, with a final, extended version being published in 1849, and was soon hailed as Finland’s ‘national epos’ – a sensitive matter given that the country had been subjected to Russian rule since 1809. It came to play a major part in Finland’s national awakening and had a massive influence on Finnish art in the late 19th century, but its role in the national consciousness remains important even today. The present album, from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dima Slobodeniouk, brings together Kalevala-related works spanning the period between 1897 and 1943. No such collection could overlook Sibelius, who composed several works inspired by the epos. Included here is a rarity – the first recording of the 1897 version of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, from the Lemminkäinen Suite. Finnish composers from later generations all had to find a way out from under Sibelius’s shadow – especially so when composing works based on the Kalevala. The portraits of Kullervo which bookend the disc, by Leevi Madetoja and Tauno Pylkkänen, are both compact works in contrast to Sibelius’s large-scale ‘choral symphony’ on the same theme, and when Uuno Klami used bold and primitive colors in his five-movement Kalevala Suite, he was looking towards Stravinsky rather than his countryman.

When Franz Schubert in 1827 invited a friend to the first performance of his Winterreise, he called it ‘a cycle of horrifying songs’. The texts that he had chosen to set were by the poet Wilhelm Müller, whose 24 poems form a psychodrama which starts with regret over a lost love but develops into an inner voyage in which a nameless Wanderer probes for answers to existential questions. There is no plot, no events in the external world: instead, we spy on fleeting emotions and thoughts. In setting these poems to music Schubert was confronting his own probable fate: Winterreise was completed the year before his death in 1828, at the age of 31, and he will have known that the syphilis he had contracted in late 1822 often led to insanity and paralysis before release in death. With this in mind, one understands why Schubert himself said that the cycle had cost him ‘more effort than any of my other songs.’

Originally written for tenor voice, the songs are often heard transposed to other vocal ranges. Here the whole cycle is transposed a minor third down, to suit the baritone of James Rutherford. Primarily active as an opera singer – he is a Wagner specialist – Rutherford also enjoys a long-lasting partnership with pianist Eugene Asti. On BIS the two have previously released a recording of Schubert’s Schwanengesang – a release which received top marks from the German website klassik-heute.de and was described as ‘one of the best recordings of these songs that I’ve heard’ by the reviewer in American Record Guide.

In the spring of 2020, the Covid pandemic caused turmoil in the concert diaries of most musicians, including the conductor Andrew Litton and his wife Katharina Kang Litton, principal violist of New York City Ballet. To find an outlet for their musical expression they began to explore the repertoire for viola and piano together. Having played the sonatas by Brahms they came across the music by two other Viennese composers, Brahms’ near-contemporary Robert Fuchs and his student Egon Kornauth. Fuchs – who the less-than-effusive Brahms called ‘a splendid musician’ – had a long and distinguished career at the Vienna Conservatory where his other students included such composers as Mahler, Wolf, Sibelius, Zemlinsky and Korngold. That the sonatas recorded here were composed around the same time as Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet can be hard to believe – as is the fact that Fuchs’s Phantasiestücke (composed in his 80th and final year) was contemporary with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1. But if they are not in any way pioneering, all three works are beautifully achieved: formally both strong and flexible, with a subtle, deeply-felt emotional coloring of their own. The Litton Duo close the recital with a piece that has a personal significance for the two – an arrangement of the Korean folk song Arirang which they received as a wedding present from Stephen Hough.

For a string player, Beethoven’s 16 quartets are of an importance similar to that of his sonatas to a pianist, or his symphonies to a conductor. As a body they form the culmination of all the chamber music composed before them, and to this day they remain a benchmark for every composer of string quartets. The Chiaroscuro Quartet begin their cycle of these works at the same place as Beethoven did, with the Op. 18 set which occupied him intensively for the best part of two years (1798 – 1800). The effort he put into these quartets was surely due to the fact that he had much to live up to – they would be measured against those of Haydn and Mozart, who had raised the genre to a supreme vehicle for ‘learned’ taste and subtle, civilized musical discourse. Beethoven was clearly determined that the six Op.?18 quartets should present the widest possible overview of his art. Of the three works included on this first volume, No.?1 in F major is the most imposing in scale and the widest in expressive range. In comparison, the second quartet, in G major, is more urbane and light-hearted, recreating the spirit of an eighteenth-century comedy of manners à la Haydn. The most lyrical of the set is Quartet No.?3 in D major, which despite its numbering was probably the first quartet that Beethoven completed.

REVIEW:

Quartet 3 in D major is the most striking, its first movement all surprises. Surprise 1 is its sense of improvisation, well conveyed by Alina Ibragimova. Surprise 2 is Ibragimova seamlessly introducing a second theme determinedly enjoying life. Surprise 3 is the cello, laying down a backcloth of octave leap then descent in quavers while the upper parts’ third theme comprises a spurting ascent and triumph of hammered crotchets. Surprise 4, all instruments together in a fourth theme of gracious chordal stability. Surprise 5, a crashing call to attention. Surprise 6: the development casts the opening theme in D minor. Surprise 7, a crisis with a surround of writhing quavers and conclusion of ff quavers in triplets by all. Surprise 8, a sudden calm and recapitulation. Surprise 9: the coda, Ibragimova bringing gazing, mystical questioning to that opening theme, the fourth theme response relieving it to return on an even keel, comfortably displayed by second violin and cello and enthusiastically validated by Ibragimova.

In the Andante con moto, the Chiaroscuros demonstrate the idée fixe of an opening theme progressing satisfyingly: just two largely rising sequences followed by two falling ones. The playful second theme is fastidiously pointed by Ibragimova and colleagues in turn. Soon comes an exploration of more sombre, questioning aspects of the first theme in a kind of variation proposed by first violin and cello and cast in pale sunlight, a striking effect from the Chiaroscuros’ gut strings, by first and second violins. Contrasted is the return of the second theme’s playfulness, then a wonderfully rounded, contrapuntally rich ‘variation’ of the first theme In the coda the cello brings a final observation of the shadowy low, and from first violin high, boundaries of the theme.

The third movement is an Allegro stylish dance from the Chiaroscuros, not labelled Minuet, not a Scherzo. It’s full of nuances well caught by the Chiaroscuros: pauses, rests and a sense of searching out the light. The ‘Trio’ in D minor has the second violin initiating running quavers, then the first taking them into upper register, the others treading saturninely the four-note ground bass Bach used in his Partita 2 for solo violin Ciaccona.

The Presto finale is an incisive display of rhythmic displacement, dynamic and textural contrasts, its development climax powerful. It sounds quite like 20th century music for strings. The Chiaroscuros deliver it with taste and polish, their coda both triumphant and carefree. The Dovers go for a lighter approach which, while matched by good contrast of accents and dynamics, doesn’t have the edge and tricksiness of the Chiaroscuros.

Best of the rest? In Quartet 1 in F major, the Adagio slow movement in D minor, marked affettuoso ed appassionato. From Ibragimova’s mournful first violin arioso there’s a vivid sense of exploring as well as experiencing this atmosphere of grief. Light comes with the F major second theme, started by second violin and sweetened by the first, a meditation extended by the viola, second and first violin in sustained, unhurried and unharried communion by the Chiaroscuros. Pianissimo reflection then moves suddenly to f despair, the Chiaroscuros gaunt and uncompromising, but becalmed by the first violin and viola in turn dwelling on the opening four notes of the first theme, so that also subject to meditation. Come the recapitulation of the first theme, after its first phrase the first violin is assaulted by the second and viola, to which it responds with movingly plaintive eloquence. The second theme return consoles, but D major sunlight is wintrier than F major. In the coda, the first violin takes frenzied flight in hemidemisemiquavers in septuplets, Claire Thirion’s cello staunchly maintains the first theme attacked by both violins. A crashing ff discord climax releases the first violin to muse in pitying empathy.

In Quartet 2 in G major, best is the finale, Allegro molto, quasi-Presto. The Chiaroscuros point well the soft, trim first theme before arrestingly sprightly loud wake-up. Then Thirion’s very loud entry of the theme, grittily delivered while Ibragimova half shrieks an equally determined counter motif, yet soon exchanges this for a delicate second theme, demurely echoed by Emilie Hörnlund’s viola, before a delightful sequence of luxuriant yawns from Ibragimova, before launching into a sylphlike dance. This provokes a bold re-entry of the first theme by second violin and viola with Ibragimova in wildly dazzling descant. The true first theme recapitulation begins quite docile, but Ibragimova decamps in showers of semiquavers. Thereafter the Chiaroscuros memorably keep the texture light, illuminating the contrapuntal ingenuity. The coda has a nicely pointed pp start before a crescendo to the scintillating ff close.

– MusicWeb International (Michael Greenhalgh)

On two highly praised albums, Susanna Mälkki and her players in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have released recordings of Béla Bartók’s three scores for the stage – The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wooden Prince and Bluebeard’s Castle, all written before 1918. The team now takes on two of his late orchestral masterpieces. Composed in 1936 for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is one of the purest examples of Bartók’s mature style, with its synthesis of folk music, classicism and modernism. One immediately striking feature is the unusual instrumentation: two string orchestras seated on opposite sides of the stage, with percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle and towards the back. In 1940, during the Second World War, Bartók emigrated to the U.S.A., where he initially found it difficult to compose. In 1943 he received a prestigious commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, however, and in less than eight weeks he composed the Concerto for Orchestra. In it he worked with contrasts between different sections of the orchestra, and the soloistic treatment of these groupings was his reason for calling the work a concerto rather than a symphony.

REVIEW:

There hasn’t been a coupling of these two iconic works this successful in, well, decades. Usually the pieces get divided between different performers, or if it’s the same forces throughout, one work comes off better than the other. Not here. Start with the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. No one (except possibly Reiner) attempts to play it at Bartók’s indicated timings–around six+ minutes per movement. Everyone is slower, and often rightly so, but sometimes rather too much slower. Mälkki sounds just about perfect: in the range of seven minutes per movement, with an eerily flowing opening fugue, a ferocious second movement Allegro, a terrifying Adagio (listen to those timpani glissandos at the bottom of the texture), and a finale that features an imaginative and characterful flexibility of tempo, highlighting its dance-like character. The Helsinki strings play with extraordinary discipline, even if some of the “special effects” such as col legno bowing could resister more strongly. Never mind. It’s a great performance.

So is that of the Concerto for Orchestra. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it sounds like a genuine collaborative effort between conductor and orchestra. Mälkki keeps the music flowing, reveling in the fine ensemble that the Helsinki Philharmonic has become: the brass fugato in the first movement, the “games of pairs” in the second, or the eerie woodwind solos in the brooding Elegia–nothing here is less than world-class. In the finale, Mälkki finds an idea balance between hard-driving forward movement and precision of articulation. She also keep something especially exciting in reserve for the coda, which dashes away thrillingly. BIS has captured the entire production in powerfully present, tactile sound that really lets you hear down through the ensemble, from top to bottom. This really is an exceptional release. If you love this music, be sure to hear it.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

The phrase memento mori has its origins in classical antiquity, but the injunction to remember one’s own mortality has been a feature of different cultures and religions throughout the ages. Just as death is universal, so is our need to adjust to this fact, and to consider our lives with it in mind. The arts are, and have been, an important means in helping us do so, which is why the laments gathered on this album speak to us all. The Austrian ensemble klingzeug has gathered examples from across 500 years – from the "Planh" (plaint) by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, a Provençal troubadour of the early 13th century, to Locatelli’s Sinfonia funebre. Two of the most famous of all musical laments have also found their way onto the disc, albeit not in the form we normally hear them; transferred to a violin, Dido’s Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas has become a song without words, while Dowland’s "Lachrimae" is heard in one of the many arrangements made of it, here by the German composer Johann Schop.

Formed in 2020, Wigmore Soloists is a chamber ensemble made up of a roster of outstanding musicians, led by Isabelle van Keulen and Michael Collins. An associate ensemble of the iconic London concert venue Wigmore Hall, it is the first one to be given the honor of using the name. The core line-up of string quintet, wind quintet and piano makes it possible to perform a wide and varied repertoire, and for its first recording the ensemble has chosen one of the larger works in the chamber music literature, in terms of duration as well as the forces involved. Franz Schubert modelled his Octet in F major on Beethoven’s Septet, a work which during the 24 years since its composition had proven extremely popular in Vienna. Schubert therefore copied Beethoven’s instrumentation (with the addition of a second violin) as well as his general plan of six movements. The Octet is however almost half as long again as the Septet, perhaps a consequence of Schubert wanting to ‘pave the way towards a grand symphony’ by writing it. Like Beethoven – and Mozart in his serenades – Schubert strikes a perfect balance between entertainment and sophistication, while also including plenty of opportunities for the players – especially the first violinist and clarinetist – to show off their virtuosity.

It is primarily for his large-scale orchestral works that Sebastian Fagerlund (b.?1972) has attracted attention, but throughout his career he has also composed chamber music. In his production, orchestral and chamber music have a fruitful relationship in which a chamber work may contain the germ of ideas that then appear in a new form in an orchestral score. One example of this is Fuel – a set of six miniatures from 2010 – which grows out of the same basic material as Ignite, a work for large orchestra completed in the same year, although they differ greatly in scale and in character. Common to the two genres is also Fagerlund’s firm grasp of the capabilities of the instruments he is writing for. Some of Finland’s leading instrumentalists join forces on the present album, with French horn player Hervé Joulain making an appearance in Transient Light, which is dedicated to him. The six works were composed between 2007 and 2013 and are all for different constellations and of varying dimensions – from a brief duo in one movement (Scherzic) to a quartet in six (Verso l’interno). But there are also common features that recur throughout the program; for example machine-like textures against which material with longer lines is reflected, and influences from other genres such as traditional music from the Middle East or rock. These do not appear as direct stylistic loans, however, but rather as elements embedded in Fagerlund’s own music.

It was when Delphine Constantin-Reznik took up the post as harpist in the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra that she first came across the name Anton Pratté, well-known in his lifetime as a harpist and composer. Her research into the music and activities of this forgotten master has now resulted in the very first recording of any of his numerous compositions for the harp. Anton Edvard Pratté was born in Bohemia into a family that ran a touring puppet theatre. He came to Sweden as an adolescent, and soon made a name for himself, performing music of his own as well as by others.

Pratté gave concerts across Sweden, as well as in Norway and Finland, and in the 1840s even went on an extensive tour of Europe, performing in Berlin (where members of the Prussian royal family were in the audience), Vienna and Prague. But much of his life was spent in the area around Norrköping where he taught the daughters of wealthy landowners and for a while conducted the local orchestra society – the forerunner of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra heard in the Grand Concert which opens the present disc. This is followed by two works for solo harp, both making use of traditional tunes from Sweden and Norway respectively.

Previous installments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as ‘conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ in BBC Music Magazine, the albums have received a Choc in Classica and the recommendation of German website klassik.com, respectively. This the third and final volume brings together Beethoven's last three works in the genre, composed between 1801 and 1812. The center-piece is the ninth sonata, the famed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’.