A genuinely great instrumentalist who certainly left his mark on the music world was cellist Heinrich Schiff, who died last year and is not adequately represented in recordings. He can be heard here in his full-on vigorous musicality with a partner who is unusually his equal, in three major works of the cello repertoire, the Sonata op. 40 by Shostakovich, the middle sonata by Beethoven and the last one by Brahms. The Austrian cellist and conductor, Heinrich Schiff, began playing piano when he was 6, and took up cello at the age of 10. His major teachers with Tobias Kühne and André Navarra, with whom he shares the qualities of a lean, centered, yet singing tone and a lyrical approach to the instrument.studied cello with Tobias Kühne and André Navarra. He studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky, one of the great conducting teachers of the time. Heinrich Schiff played the famous "Mara" Stradivarius made in 1711 and "Sleeping Beauty" made by Montagnana in Venice in 1739.