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CD : <span style="font-weight: bold;">Brahms: The Cello Sonatas / Rostropovich, Serkin [P]1990<br />
</span><br />
<br />
<pre class="nfo">1. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello e-moll Op. 38: 1. Allegro non troppo
2. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello e-moll Op. 38: 2. Allegretto quasi Menuetto
3. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello e-moll Op. 38: 3. Allegro
4. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello F-dur Op. 99: 1. Allegro vivace
5. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello F-dur Op. 99: 2. Adagio affettuoso
6. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello F-dur Op. 99: 3. Allegro passionato
7. Sonate fur Klavier und Violoncello F-dur Op. 99: 4. Allegro molto</pre><br />
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Sonata for Cello and Piano no 1 in E minor, Op. 38 by Johannes Brahms <br />
Performer: Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello), Rudolf Serkin (Piano) <br />
Period: Romantic <br />
Written: 1862-1865; Austria <br />
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Sonata for Cello and Piano no 2 in F major, Op. 99 by Johannes Brahms <br />
Performer: Rudolf Serkin (Piano), Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello) <br />
Period: Romantic <br />
Written: 1886; Austria <br />
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<br />
Release Date: 10/25/1990 <br />
Label: Deutsche Grammophon<br />
Catalog #: 410510 <br />
Spars Code: DDD <br />
Composer: Johannes Brahms <br />
Performer: Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Serkin <br />
Number of Discs: 1 <br />
Recorded in: Stereo<br />
<br />
The balance is not quite right, with the cello too prominent, but once I got used to that the performances started to take me over. <br />
Here we have two of the greatest classical interpreters of their time taking us into the special world of Brahms, and they had me <br />
thinking about the composer in a way I have not done in years. Most books and articles I have read about him have a lot to say about <br />
Beethoven, but I really doubt whether Brahms's music would have been much different if Beethoven had never lived. Both consciously <br />
and by instinct, Brahms was the guardian of the great German musical tradition embodied above all in Bach -- a tradition where pure <br />
'absolute' music expressed itself through an intellectual apparatus of polyphonic and structural devices. Since Bach's time Haydn <br />
and Mozart had perfected for instrumental music a compositional system usually called the 'sonata' style. Beethoven had naturally <br />
picked this up, but what he forced on to it was a special dimension of highly personalised expression, and it is precisely this way <br />
of treating it that Brahms turned his back on. With him we are back, in his own deeply original way, to music using the composer to <br />
express ITself.<br />
<br />
I seem to find that Brahms gets more instinctive understanding from performers than Beethoven does, and I believe quite simply that <br />
that is because he understands himself better than Beethoven does himself. Teetering on the verge of incoherence at times was all <br />
part of Beethoven's unique greatness, and it is not disrespectful -- quite the reverse -- to say so. I have heard far more good <br />
performances than bad ones of these two wonderful sonatas, and the special meaning these particular accounts have for me is not <br />
something that I felt at first hearing. When a pianist of very special and unusual gifts is aged 80 or so and has retained his <br />
technique and evenness of touch, when he has spent a lifetime developing an austere and uncompromising vision of the instrumental <br />
music that we normally think of as being the 'greatest', when he studies completely afresh the works he is to perform with the <br />
greatest cellist of the next generation, there is a good chance we are going to get something very special, and I do not believe <br />
I am imagining it. This is a totally unique artistic combination offering a very special -- not eccentric in any way but still very <br />
special -- insight into a composer that many of us know by heart without really getting our minds round the phenomenon he represents.<br />
<br />
This record is a milestone in my musical pilgrimage and maybe it will be in yours.
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