The Tortelier and Heidsieck Beethoven cello sonatas have been digitally remastered, and their refinement, mischief and, above all, fine sense of scale are underlined in a clear, bright, if a little dry recording.
It is an acoustic which suits well, though, Heidsieck's chuckling responses and pearly articulation in the two Op. 5 Sonatas. The finger-weight and pointing, particularly of the Haydnesque finale of the G minor, has the echo of a fortepiano very much in mind; and it is matched by playing of thoughtful placing and live timbres in the light baritone of Tortelier's cello.
Neither player forgets that these are really ''grandes Sonates pour le Clavecin avec un Violoncelle oblige'': the cello's bolder virtuosity has to wait for the last two Op. 102 Sonatas to come into its own. Even here, though, Tortelier avoids the obvious. His first movement of the D major (No. 5) Sonata will perhaps be a little nervous for those who look for more resonantly heroic playing here. But in the Adagio—the first substantial slow movement of the set—Tortelier's restrained cantabile, like a fine, live charcoal line, develops the deceptively diffident phrasing which marked his second Sonata's central movement, into a fully integrated aria.
There is much that is stimulating, too, in the Third and Fourth Sonatas: frisky hide-and-seek dialogue rather than tough dialectic, moments of unpredictability, whimsicality, even, from the cello, and a recognition from both players of the volatility of temperament unique to these works.'