This is the first volume of Beethoven's complete works for cello and fortepiano, works which were, in turn, the first of their kind – sonatas in which the cello found its own, proud voice, liberated at last from trotting dutifully along the continuo bass-line. And it is the 'firstness' which these performances so excitingly celebrate. With their 1770 Benjamin Banks cello and reproduction 1795 Walter fortepiano, Anssi Karttunen and Tuija Hakkila play as if they really are exploring ideas of startling novelty, daring each other on, and pushing their instruments to the limits of their capabilities.
In the Op. 5 No. 1 Sonata they re-create the energy of those two itinerant virtuosos, Beethoven and Duport, in whose hands the work first came to life. Rhythms snap one against the other, as the sudden mischiefs and secret moments of brief song, so prophetic of the compact dramas of the Op. 10 piano sonatas, spring to new life.
The Op. 64 Sonata – an arrangement of the String Trio Op. 3 – is a totally different creature, with its six sharply contrasted movements. Karttunen and Hakkila revel in their differences. Every note bites into place in their ferocious outer movements, always tempered with the good humour of tiny subtleties and graces of phrasing. The range of detail and dynamic nuance in a single piano scale or repeated note is remarkable: so are the disorientating silences and offbeats of the first Menuetto.
Both performers remember that, for Beethoven, Handel was the greatest composer who ever lived; and they do both proud in their buoyantly inflected, mischievously competitive Variations on See the conqu'ring hero comes.'