The year was 1961, the venue the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. After a memorable performance in Berlin a year earlier, Fitzgerald was once again singing to a packed concert hall. This release has captured that performance, and has been remastered for crystal-clear sound quality. It’s the closest thing to being right there in the audience those five decades ago. (Fondamenta)

Yan Levionnois made a name for himself with his very first album, Cello Sollo, released by Fondamenta in 2013, garnering the prestigious “ffff” label awarded by Télérama magazine. This was followed by Pierrots Lunaires, with violinist Mélanie Clapiès, also brought out by Fondamenta. Guillaume Bellom has taken an unconventional path, training as both a pianist and a violinist, and was also awarded Télérama magazine’s esteemed “ffff” label for an album dedicated to Schubert in 2013. In 2017 he was nominated in the Instrumental Revelation category at the French Victoires de la Musique. Cello Sonatas is devoted to the German romantic repertoire and features Schubert’s Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A Minor D. 821, Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in D Major, Op. 58 and the more rarely recorded Sonata for Cello and Piano in F Major, Op. 6, by Richard Strauss. Schubert is honored with a performance of his Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano. Don’t try looking out for an arpeggione – only about a dozen of these instruments have survived to the present day. It was a hybrid of a guitar and cello, played with a bow, but which never gained popularity. The eponymous sonata, on the other hand, is still considered as one of Schubert’s major works. Mendelssohn composed the Sonata Number 2 for Cello and Piano in 1843, almost 20 years after Schubert’s composition. Mendelssohn made an early start: at the age of 12, he composed an opera, and his famous octet was written when he was 16. This sonata is classical in both its form and musical inspiration, a real gem. Mendelssohn was not only a great composer, but he also revived the music of J.S. Bach

An event music-lovers have been awaiting expectantly: Fondamenta has just made it happen. At the instigation of his daughter, the pianist Ksenia Bashmet, the legendary viola player Yuri Bashmet has returned to solo repertoire after fifteen years away from recording studios to give us a stunning interpretation of the last opus of Brahms’ chamber music. The album opens and closes with the two sonatas for viola and piano, Opus 120, two masterpieces of the repertoire. Between the two works, Ksenia Bashmet delights the listener with her ardour and lyrical sensitivity in the two rhapsodies for piano.

Works that showcase the timbre, virtuosity and sensitivity of the viola are few and far between. The bonds between Ksenia and Yuri weave themselves into a magical web, palpable in both the turmoil and the melancholy of the first sonata and the subtle, sensitive dialogue of the second sonata, which closes with a high-spirited burst of laughter.