On June 24th of this year, Pierre Fournier would have been 80: no doubt Philips had been saving this recording, made in a Swiss church in 1984, for that great occasion. Were I in the position of having to choose just one movement from the two discs to play in memorial tribute, I think it would have to be the Andante molto tranquillo from Grieg's unjustly neglected Sonata. This beautifully wrought, nostalgic little gem immediately reveals Fournier as the same hyper-sensitive, discerning poet of old, his cantabile as luminous and sensuously appealing as it is refined—even if his bowing arm, understandably, could no longer command its former weight and intensity. In the impassioned central climax, as in moments of heightened excitement in all four sonatas, we do have to accept the fact that his pianist son, Jean Fonda, is the more robust partner.
In Brahms's two cello sonatas, Fournier's fine-spun tone more often reminded me of Isserlis, who uses gut strings, and the refined Harrell (Decca) than the richly ripe Rostropovich (DG). The E minor Sonata's first movement has an affecting intimacy, though not quite the flowing longer line of all three rival performances. The central Allegretto I thought too slow, too precise in accentuation, insufficiently on its toes. Nothing in the F major Sonata is lovelier than the Adagio affettuoso. This is vintage Fournier, marking every note with a stylishness all his own. Eloquently phrased as the outer movements are, both bring reminders of Fournier's restricted weight. Hearing so much more keyboard than cello at the outset even made me wonder if the piano itself should have been so forwardly placed. As for the impassioned outburst at bar 57 in the finale (unforgettable from Harrell), this made my heart bleed for Fournier, in spirit still so willing... Any tiny little passing strains of other kinds in the course of the album are almost immediately countered.
On the grounds that ''no publisher's hack would have been so sensitive'' to the problems involved, the sleeve-note writer thinks it highly probable that Brahms himself, an indefatigable transcriber, was responsible for the anonymously issued cello version of the G major Violin Sonata. Fournier and Fonda do all they can to preserve the original spirit. Even so, listening to such familiar G major strains a fourth down from a deeper, darker instrument is akin to being plunged from the light of an early summer's day into autumnal dusk, and I'm sure many of their friends would have preferred a genuine cello sonata instead.
The Philips CD sound is brighter and more forward than Hyperion's reproduction of Isserlis and Evans, a recording newly transferred to CD. The higher volume at which you are tempted to listen to Compact Discs strikes me as not altogether good for the piano in either version. To my ears, Peter Evans sounds more true to life on LP, where there is no suspicion of anything 'canned'. Musically it's good to be able to reaffirm that the maturely personal Isserlis/Evans performance holds its own amidst stiff international competition.'