In recent decades, Johann Sebastian Bach's works have undergone numerous transcriptions and adaptations. Since the 1960s, the guitar repertoire has seen the addition of several Bach pieces originally intended for the lute, an instrument that is undoubtedly among the most akin to the modern six-string guitar. Following the increasingly in-depth study of Bach's work and the spread of the classical guitar, several harpsichord pieces have also been transcribed and performed. This album magnificently displays these pieces by exploiting the rich dynamics and full polyphonic capacity of the guitar.

The Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and the Clavier-Büchlein vor Anna Magdalena Bach hold an important place, as these collections offer a glimpse into Bach’s familial and didactic spheres of action. Within the Friedemann Bach collection, we find the two Praeambula (BWV 924 & 926), characterised by arpeggiated writing, probably a model for students to create a first simple improvisation. Further on, the Fantasias that appear in the final part of the collection show a wonderful degree of contrapuntal complexity. Although there were 2 versions of the Anna Magdalena collection, the one which has survived almost in its entirety seems to have been intended as a family album, with contributions not only from Anna Magdalena (J.S. Bach’s wife), but also from her son Carl Philipp Emanuel and other composers. The pieces in this collection, including vocal pieces written for Anna (an accomplished singer), are most commonly small dance forms characterised by an essential and refined homophonic-style writing. The Anglaise and Minuet from the French Suite No. 3, as well as the more solemn Allemande from the French Suite No. 4, are clear examples of the gracefulness of these compositions, which show a subtler sound texture than those of other series of Bach suites, as well as a more limited use of counterpoint. Also of exquisite elegance is the Minuet from Partita BWV 825, taken from the first volume of the Clavier-Übung.

This album also includes some famous works, among them the preludes from the French Suite No. 3 and Johann Peter Kellner’s collection. These are rather varied pieces, written for teaching purposes and passed down through written transcriptions from Bach’s pupils. Some are extremely short but show some degree of harmonic density and sometimes a rather chromatic style, while others have a slightly broader structure and a writing more similar to the Inventions, with a systematic use of counterpoint. The album also features works from other prominent composers – George Philipp Telemann and C.P.E. Bach – as well as two lesser-known composers, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and Christian Petzold.

Whether or not they actually traveled south of the Alps, as Handel did early in his career, all 18th-century German composers of note were influenced by the Italian style of vocal and instrumental writing at the time. Manuel Tomadin’s latest album for Brilliant Classics explores the connections between these apparently disparate traditions, beginning with the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue BWWV564 which stands among the most striking examples of JS Bach’s work during his years as Capellmeister to the ducal court in Weimar (1710-1717). The Italian qualities of the concerto-like nature of the opening Toccata in BWV564 and then the pathos of the Adagio, with its walking bass and Neapolitan harmonies, are underlined by the following transcription made by Bach of a Vivaldi Concerto, the A minor RV522, and then Walther’s transcription of a concerto by Torelli. Just as Bach was later influenced by the violin playing and writing of the virtuoso Pisendel, German-born but widely traveled in Italy, Johann Gottlieb Graun was a pupil of Pisendel’s who had also studied with the prince of Italian violinist-composers, Giuseppe Tartini, and so Tomadin includes a solo-organ concerto of Graun’s which abounds in violinistic figuration. An arrangement of Handel’s opening Sinfonia to his oratorio Esther, another Vivaldi concerto and Bach’s magnificent A minor Prelude and Fugue BWWV543 complete this stimulating program.

This album is also a valuable record of the historically significant organ in St Peter’s Church in the Dutch town of Leens. Dating from 1733-34, and thus contemporary with the music recorded here, the instrument is the work of the Dutch organ-builder Albertus Anthoni Hinsz. He modelled his designs on the instruments by the Schnitger family who dominated North-German organ-building at the time, and the example in Leens is a superbly preserved and scrupulously restored example of this heritage. The booklet is generously annotated with an essay by Manuel Tomadin exploring the Italian connections between the music on the album, a history of the organ, a full stop-list and a record of the specific registration used for each piece.

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) was a cosmopolitan piano virtuoso who studied with C.P.E. Bach, lived and performed in one European capital after another in a tumultuous progress across the continent, and wrote huge quantities of eclectic music which has largely been forgotten. Dussek’s music for his own instrument may now be much better known than half a century ago – not least thanks to the first period-instrument edition of his piano sonatas, produced by Brilliant Classics – but he wrote almost 80 violin sonatas which also deserve revival as the product of a fluent and always inventive mind working on the cusp of eras we now identify as Classicism and Romanticism.

The three sonatas gathered here as Dussek’s Opus 1 were published around 1780. Each of them is cast in two movements: a lively Allegro in sonata form, followed by a Rondo or (in No.1) a set of variations, gentle and even meditative in character, in which Dussek’s originality shines through the occasional, recitative-like episodes. The six sonatas of Op.28 belong to the genre of ‘accompanied piano sonatas’ in which the musical substance is conceived principally for the keyboard instrument, with an obbligato melody instrument (such as the violin or flute) adding or doubling a top line if convenient. By the time he wrote them in 1795, Dussek had been a celebrity of London musical life for six years, having fled revolutionary Paris in a hurry. The dedication to ‘Miss Shaw’ refers to one of the daughters of the composer Thomas Shaw, and one may imagine the father on the violin accompanying and encouraging his daughter on the piano in Dussek’s vivid evocations of rural life and the lively march of a tin-soldier regiment.

Dussek’s sonatas are played here in new recordings by the German duo of Julia Huber and Miriam Altmann in polished and historically informed performances, using an authentic 1780 fortepiano. Huber has worked with German period-instrument ensembles such as L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra, La Stagione Frankfurt and the Collegium Cartusianum in Cologne.

A unique recital on record, for a hauntingly beautiful instrumental combination, featuring several first recordings. The duo of trumpet and organ is a wellestablished one, having attracted composers from the early Baroque period onwards. The combination of flute and organ, while requiring careful balancing so that the organ does not overwhelm the flute, is no less attractive in its way, and has drawn from composers a more varied palette of expression. This new album is made by a duo of Piedmontese musicians who have explored the riches of the flute-and-organ repertoire to come up with a balanced selection of pieces written by 20th- and 21st-century composers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Duo Les Brumes begin with an undoubted masterpiece: the Sonata da Chiesa which the Swiss composer Frank Martin originally composed in 1939 for viola d'amore and organ. Because his Dutch wife Maria Boeke was an excellent flautist, he also produced a version for flute and organ in 1941. The sonata’s three sections enclose a sequence of gentle, neoclassical dance movements between two reflective slow movements. The album’s other substantial work is Ain Karim, a fantasia composed in 1995 by the Swiss
organist-composer Daniel Roth. Aïn Karim is the name of the place near Jerusalem where Mary, mother of Jesus, is thought to have visited her cousin Elisabeth and spoken the words of the ‘Magnificat’. Daniel Roth has taken part of this text ('He puts down the mighty from their seat and exalts the humble and meek') to emphasise the contrast between the ‘small’ flute and the ‘monumental’ organ. In between, Duo Les Brumes present a gallery of vividly coloured miniatures: a suite of Four Pieces composed in 1962 by the Austrian composer Augustin Franz Kropfreiter (1936-2003), within the same kind of ‘modern neoclassical’ vein as Martin’s Sonata da Chiesa; then Five Pieces by Jean Langlais, more extrovert in character. Two Canadian composers are also represented with the radiant, soaring Melodia by Denis Bédard and the Elegy by Michael Conway Baker.

The Organ Concertos Op. 4 and Op. 7 by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) were originally composed as musical interludes to be performed during the intervals of the Oratorios. Handel chose to write for the organ, an instrument hitherto relegated to the liturgical service, to emancipate it and have it take on a new character, more brilliant and appealing to the public. From the scores it is clear that these concertos do not have to be played on a large instrument, as they only sporadically require the use of the pedalboard, which therefore made the concertos also performable on the harpsichord.

Transcription, the art of transcribing repertoire for a different instrument or ensemble combination, is absolutely an integral part of the boundless organ and keyboard literature dating from the distant Renaissance to the present day. One great example from the organ repertory is composer and organist Clément Loret’s (1833–1909) transcription of Handel’s Organ Concertos for solo organ. The two composers complement each other – Handel, a great virtuoso and dazzling composer of the Baroque period capable of gripping the most disparate audiences, and Loret, a late Romantic belonging to the great French school of Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, where the organ is placed center stage. Loret intervenes in Handel’s work whilst maintaining its spirit. He preserves the dense contrapuntal writing, merging organ and orchestral parts without reserve, and always retaining the brilliance and vivacity that characterise the original in virtuosic projection towards the modern symphonic organ. This all makes for a large sound and an array of significant technical and stylistic difficulties for the performer.

The set of Op. 4 and Op .7 taken together includes 12 concertos in total, each with its own character, shape, style and atmosphere. The tonalities used are those that were the most frequent and most in vogue during the Baroque period, except perhaps for the concerto in A major Op.7, which stands out not only for its tonality, but also for the particular elegance and fluctuation of its fugue theme.

In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).

The Florence-born composer Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) published his Sei Sonate per il Cimbalo around 1780; they are currently believed to be the first published work by the composer, although he had written operas and religious music prior to the publication of this work. The style of these sonatas is not too far from the musical fashion of the time: they all consist of two movements, the first in sonata-form, the second a rondò where the second theme is typically characterized by highly virtuosic writing. All six sonatas follow this strict formal code, however, Cherubini manages to create a surprising variety in the themes and their development. Each sonata could, in fact, depict a different stock character from the commedia dell’Arte, with their strict formal codification employed in a theatrical way thanks to the perfect balance of ideas set out each time. Even the bass seems to be adjusted depending on the mood of the theme – Cherubini employs Murky bass, Alberti bass and even counterpoint. The harmonic closeness between the key signatures of each sonata gives further cohesion to the whole set.

After careful consideration, Simone El Oufir Pierini found the fortepiano to be the best instrument to play these works on, although in the printed edition it was explicitly said that they should be played on the harpsichord. The piano, a new instrument, was highly favoured by the new Tuscan court, and the potential of this new instrument was sought out with keen interest by composers. The employment of the fortepiano for these sonatas hopefully sheds new light on these pieces, written by one of the most influential composers of the time.

New recordings of Goethe and Heine settings by a master Russian song-writer, by performers thoroughly versed in the composer’s complex harmony and heritage. While Nikolai Medtner only emigrated from Moscow to Berlin in 1921, eventually settling in London, the Russian composer traced a deep connection to German culture through the ancestry of his mother. He was familiar with the German language and culture from his childhood, and made his first visit to Berlin in the winter of 1904-5, then returned for most of 1907 and the summer of 1909. It can be no coincidence that these original-language settings of two of Germany’s greatest poets date from this period in Medtner’s life. In his mid-20s at this point, Medtner had become internationally known as a pianist of formidable technical and interpretative gifts, but he continued to compose and to teach, taking up a post at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1909. While Medtner’s pianism often lends the quicker songs a scintillating brilliance, such as the Elfenliedchen which is third in the Opus 6 collection of Goethe’s songs, the overall mood of the collection is imbued with the feelings of love and longing which are key-signatures of Romanticism (German or Russian). Medtner was always drawn towards musical contemplation of life’s deeper themes, and he accordingly sets both poets at their most philosophical and visionary, in the Wandrers Nachtlied of Goethe and the Bergstimme of Heine.

On this album, recorded in 2022, Ekaterina Levental and Frank Peters couple the Opp 6, 15 and 18 settings of Goethe with the three Op 12 settings of Heine: a unique but natural pairing on record. The booklet includes both original texts and English translations.

Born in 1947, Salvatore Sciarrino has been delighting and perplexing his audiences, often at the same time, ever since the mid-60s, though his reputation has long since spread beyond European avant-garde circles, particularly with the opera Luci miei tradici and its stagings in Brussels, New York, Salzburg and Berlin. The basic premises of Sciarrino’s language explore the limits of perception, the borderline between sound and silence, and the abstraction of gestures and forms from the tonal contexts that supply them. ‘I don't write music, I write a psychological experience,’ Sciarrino he declared, and his output certainly resists description or classification except insofar as it takes its place in a grand tradition of Italian postwar experimentalists in the laboratory of sound, headed by figures as diverse as Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono.

Even at the level of his works for orchestra and the stage, Sciarrino writes with an immediacy and intimacy of expression which finds its natural home in the kind of chamber ensemble works recorded here. Scored for flute, guitar, bass clarinet and violin, the album’s title work dates from 1986 and lives up to its title by discovering how many shades of sound can be found near the border with silence, a sonic analogue to a Rothko painting or an Agnes Martin drawing. Vagabonde blu makes full use of the accordion’s potential to set weightless and ceaseless waves of sound in motion. By contrast, the scoring of alto flute, cor anglais and bass flute makes Muro d’orizzonte a study in furtive attacks and explosions. The most recent work is Alba meònia from 2020, receiving its first recording on this album, and scattering its timbres across a still wider soundscape through the diverse scoring for flute, violin and guitar.

Ignaz Pleyel (1757–1831) was one of the most multifaceted artists of all time, being active in various fields as a composer, performer, publisher and piano builder. Born in Lower Austria, he became the pupil of Joseph Haydn in Eisenstadt, who considered him to be a superb student. In 1791, due to the French Revolution, musical performances in churches and public concerts were abolished, so Pleyel travelled to London searching for a better place to work. Pleyel was a quite prolific composer, writing at least 42 symphonies, 70 string quartets and several operas. Recent scholarship has suggested that the theme for the St. Anthony Variations Op.56a by Johannes Brahms was probably composed not by Haydn but by Ignaz Pleyel. The beautiful and cheerful Quintet in C for piano and winds is in a pleasant, early-classical Viennese style, reminding us of the previous masterpieces for the same medium by Mozart and Beethoven. An arrangement for Wind Octet of this work is preserved at the Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen in Germany.

The manuscript of the Due Duetti for clarinet and viola has so far never been published. The Trio Op.20 No.1 for two clarinets and bassoon is an arrangement from one of Pleyel’s flute and string trios. The two short songs Behind yon Hills and The smiling Morn, from the Original Scottish Airs, are originally for soprano and piano, but the clarinet replaces the singer with a similarly expressive and beautiful result. The Variations in F on a Theme of Pleyel is a piece arranged for three clarinets by Antonín Myslík, taken from the Quartet in F by Franz Krommer (1759–1831). Mozart praised Pleyel’s compositions in a letter written to his father.

Founded in 1951, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana has been directed by charismatic maestros of international renown from the Romanian Sergiu Celibidache in the 60s to the Venezuelan Diego Matheuz and Duncan Ward in the present era. Now Gianna Fratta joins their ranks with a unique showcase of 20th-century orchestral masterpieces. Gianna Fratta opened the 2021-22 season of the OSS in Palermo with a concert featuring Martha Argerich as soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto; she has herself won acclaim as a pianist, and now conducts leading ensembles across Italy. That program concluded with an explosive account of the suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet. Fratta likewise draws a full palette of orchestral color from the Sicilian orchestra in this studio account of the Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s radical sequel to the Firebird.

Completed in 1908, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy makes such an instructive companion on disc that it is surprising to find the pairing is almost unique. Where Stravinsky uses jarring rhythmic dislocation and his command of an orchestra to paint tableaux in sound of a pagan rite, Scriabin places a no less quintessentially French-Russian harmonic palette in the service of sensual pleasure, building wave upon wave of melodic intensity to crash over the listener and ultimately overwhelm them. Both contrasting styles owe much to the innovations of Debussy, whose rhythmic suppleness in the evocation of wind and water would come to have a profound influence over 20th-century composers in the orchestral seascapes which punctuate his first opera, Peter Grimes. In the years after its premiere in 1945, Grimes established a place on the world’s lyric stages for British opera thanks to the universal power of its storytelling, not only through the ordinary characters at its heart, but through the translation of their complex feelings into surging orchestral textures.

According to Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938), the aim of the Studien über die Etüden von F. Chopin “is to develop the mechanical, technical and musical possibilities of piano playing, to expand the peculiarly adapted nature of the instrument to polyphonic, polyrhythmic and polydynamic work and to widen the range of its possibilities in tone coloring…” Godowsky employs various forms in his Studies on Chopin, including variations on the études, transcriptions for the left hand, free transcriptions, cantus firmus, and metamorphoses.

The magnificent C major of Study No.1 opens this extraordinary set: a mighty chorale, the text of the original study in the left hand and its inversion in the right hand are all combined in order to create a polyphonic work in full pianistic tone. In the final pages, the piano seems to express its highest dynamic degree and, as Godowsky writes, “in the coda the player must not show the slightest sign of fatigue”. Also based on Op.10/1, Study No. 2 is a perfect example of Godowsky’s left hand writing. A revolutionary use of the fingering and of the right pedal allows a polyphonic effect similar to the original. Godowsky wrote three studies (Nos. 23–25) for the left hand alone based on Chopin’s Op .25/1. Of these, No. 24 is intended to give the impression of a piece for four hands. The rippling texture of No. 25 is reminiscent of an Aeolian harp.

The final study (No. 43), based on Op. 25/12, is a tour-de-force for the left hand alone, covering the entire range of the keyboard by itself in homage to Chopin's 'Revolutionary' Étude. This set contains a selection of original compositions and transcriptions of works by composers other than Chopin and was recorded on the Steinway D 1906.

REVIEWS:

It’s a critical cliché to equate pianists attempting Leopold Godowsky’s complete Studies based on Chopin’s Études with mountaineers ascending Mount Everest, yet it’s the truth. Emanuele Delucchi serves up half of the cycle (all of the studies based on Chopin’s Op. 10 originals), and proves every inch a viable contender alongside the Marc-André Hamelin and Carlo Grante reference versions.

While Delucchi’s mastery of the daunting “Revolutionary” Étude for the left hand alone impresses on its own terms, the faster edge of Boris Berezovsky’s terrific live recording still dominates the competition. Still, Delucchi’s total comfort with and absorption of Godowsky’s serpentine idiom makes itself felt in every measure. Needless to say, I look forward to Delucchi’s performances of the remaining studies.

-- ClassicsToday.com

By and large, Delucchi proves a more gentle and yielding Godowsky interpreter when measured alongside Carlo Grante’s firmly etched filigree and Marc-André Hamelin’s supple élan.

He doesn’t quite attain Hamelin’s effortless paradigm insofar as the left hand taking over the “Winter Wind” Etude’s stormy passagework, or Op. 25 No. 6’s infamous double thirds. And given his lyrical proclivities, I was slightly disappointed by Delucchi’s pianistically well-groomed yet slightly square readings of two sublime favorites: the E major transformation of the A-flat Nouvelle Etude and the intricate “Aeolian Harp” makeover. Yet Delucchi’s high craft and devotion to this repertoire deserve attention, without, however, displacing Hamelin’s reference edition nor Grante’s formidable Chopin/Godowsky cycle on Altarus, which may be hard to source.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Giuseppe Corsi (c.1631/1691), known as Celani, was one of the most important composers of the Roman school active in the second half of the 17th century. Corsi's catalogue of works includes around 23 secular compositions including Cantatas for one voice and basso continuo. The protagonist of the cantata Dalle balze sicane is the mythological Enceladus who, having been plunged into the bowels of Mount Etna by the goddess Athena, invokes Jupiter to placate the outrage against him. The character’s 'misfortunes' and 'sorrows' of love in Cruda legge del mio fato find analogies with those experienced by the composer. The first aria in this cantata is rich in complex enharmonics, greatly expanded and varied in the repeat, when the voice is engaged in difficult bravura passages.

The cantata Abbandonato e solo begins with a veritable monologue from Roman emperor Nero, tormented by his past ghosts. The cantata on this album by Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661–1756), Pompe, voi che ascondete, although attributed to Corsi’s favourite pupil, is in fact still of unproven authorship. It is possible that Giuseppe Corsi met Giovanni Battista Vitali (1632–1692). The two composers in 1685 took part in the famous dispute over parallel fifths in Arcangelo Corelli's Sonata Op.2 No.3. The bass of the violin family, of which Vitali was a virtuoso, was widespread thanks to the Este patronage of Duke Francesco I. In his cantatas, Corsi repeatedly insists on the B flat grave, a characteristic of violin bass tuning, and the numerous semiquaver passages are particularly agile on the violone, so it is not unlikely that the composer from Marsica had this instrument in mind. It is also for this reason that Corsi's compositions have been joined by some movements from the Partite sopra diverse sonatas for the violone by Vitali that are particularly pleasing.

The guitar became increasingly important to Castelnuovo-Tedesco through the course of his long career. ‘My art tends progressively to simplify itself,’ he wrote, ‘and the guitar has become one of my favorite means of expression because it has led me towards the essential.’ He was first drawn to the instrument after meeting Andres Segovia in Venice in 1932. The Variations á travers les siècles Op.71 followed almost immediately.

Over the course of the next seven years, Castelnuovo-Tedesco produced a string of equally successful pieces for the instrument. Most substantial is the four movement Guitar Sonata subtitled as a ‘Homage to Boccherini’: an elegant essay in neoclassicism which evokes the courtly elegance of Boccherini’s Guitar Quintets while sounding entirely true to Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s own language. There followed a Capriccio Diabolico, which lives up to its title as a homage to Paganini with fiendish figuration which delighted Segovia. Sharing the Capriccio’s Opus number of 87 is a contrastingly restrained character-study of Sicilian flavor, ‘Oranges in Bloom’.

The last guitar piece written by Castelnuovo-Tedesco before leaving Europe for good was the Variations plaisantes sur un petit air populaire Op.95, which takes its theme from a French folk melody after a Swiss critic had taken aim at the Sonata as merely a display piece for Segovia. Castelnuovo-Tedesco proved him wrong with another demonstration of his deep feeling for the guitar as an instrument of both display and reflection, ending with an elaborate fugue. This album is the latest in a series of new recordings documenting the output of Castenuovo-Tedesco. Rather than playing from the standard editions of these pieces by Segovia, Antonio Rugolo has gone back to the composer’s manuscripts as well as consulting newer editions by Angelo Gilardino, resulting in performances which are truer to the composer’s vision than ever before.

This recording showcases 3 string quartets by 3 Galician composers from 3 consecutive centuries. Each composer represents the experiences of their respective lifetimes in Galicia, a place with a true vocation for universality. Marcial del Adalid (1826–1881) was born into a family with a great musical tradition. After studying in London with Ignaz Moscheles, one of Beethoven’s disciples, Adalid became one of the main representatives of the ‘Rexurdimento’, a Romantic nationalist movement in Galicia. The String Quartet in G Op.16 was the author's only foray into this genre. The four movements follow the pathway set by Beethoven, and echoes of his Sonata Pathétique can be heard; later, the final section recalls the transparent classicism of the Haydnian rondos.

José Arriola (1895–1954), was a famous pianist and composer. A child prodigy, he was sponsored by the Queen Regent María Cristina who gave him a scholarship to study in Germany with Richard Strauss. Arriola's String Quartet in C, dedicated to the memory of his mother, presents writing imbued with Germanic post-romanticism, the legacy of Strauss’s teachings. A work of great depth, Arriola creates a dense polyphonic framework while eliminating ornaments, giving the piece great lyrical intensity.

Juan Durán (b.1960) is one of the most representative composers of the current generation of Galician artists. He has written many pieces for chamber, symphonic, vocal and stage genres, as well as orchestrations of Galician music. The most striking aspect of his String Quartet is, without a doubt, the choice of the three movements that make it up: a pasodoble, a blues and a samba. Durán wanted to heighten the classical form through maintaining its sonata structure. Therefore, the pasodoble acts as the exposition section, the blues is the development, and the energetic final samba is structured around the recurring rondo.

Born in Lille, Édouard Lalo (1823–1892) studied the violin before leaving home for good, against his father’s will, to enter the Paris Conservatoire. Having graduated without family support, he began to make a living in the capital as an orchestral violinist and violist and as a member of the Quatuor Armingaud (from 1855), one of many such ensembles which sprang up within a culture of chamber music that was then supported by the foundation of the Société nationale de musique. Lalo’s Cello Sonata in A minor is relatively unknown, despite its obvious beauty and clear Schumannesque qualities.

Charles Koechlin (1867–1950) studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire with Jules Massenet and Fauré. He composed frequently, producing a huge opus of well over 200 works, and in a fluent style distinguished above all by its melodic invention, with supple and eloquent melodic themes. In that regard, the spirit of Fauré is never far away in the Cello Sonata Op.66 – allusive, imbued with a retrospective spirit which unfolds into a kind of accompanied recitative, quintessentially cellistic. Koechlin wrote the Sonata in October 1917 in a flurry of chamber-music activity. Gabriel Pierné (1863–1937), also an alumnus of the Paris Conservatoire, was a successful musician and won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1882. Pierné became one of the most influential musicians in Paris, more at the time through his conducting than his composing. He introduced audiences at the Concerts Colonne to countless premieres of lasting significance, and was one of the principal conductors for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, conducting the world premiere of Stravinsky’s Firebird.

Pierné’s single-movement Cello Sonata in F sharp minor is in a cyclical form, following the example of Franck and Liszt.