Chopin Cello Sonata No 2; Introduction and Polonaise brillante. Saint-Saëns Cello Sonata
Unfailingly musical performances that just lack the last ounce of colour
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns, Fryderyk Chopin
Genre:
Chamber
Label: Signum
Magazine Review Date: 10/2011
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 71
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: SIGCD252
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Sonata for Cello and Piano |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Daniel Grimwood, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer Jamie Walton, Cello |
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 2 |
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer Daniel Grimwood, Piano Jamie Walton, Cello |
Introduction and Polonaise brillant |
Fryderyk Chopin, Composer
Daniel Grimwood, Piano Fryderyk Chopin, Composer Jamie Walton, Cello |
Author: Harriet Smith
For success in Chopin’s Cello Sonata you need not only a first-rate cellist but, perhaps even more crucially, a pianist utterly at one with his idiom. The mazurka-infused Scherzo is a good litmus test, demanding that the pianist switches from the forthright to the ethereal while negotiating handfuls of notes at speed. So while Pierre Fournier is compelling in his own right, his pianist Jean Fonda is too backwardly miked and not quite dextrous enough. Grimwood is an altogether more convincing foil for Walton; but then you turn to Argerich with Rostropovich and all comparisons are blown out of the water. Her version with Maisky, on the other hand, pushes things too far, losing sight of Chopin’s innate classicism in the process. That balance is better achieved in the Gerhardt/Osborne reading and indeed on this new recording. But again it’s colour that seems in slightly short supply here, with Walton relying perhaps too much on the inherently beautiful sound he makes, which sometimes softens the effect of some of Chopin’s more startling harmonic twists. And in the delightfully frothy Introduction and Polonaise, though Walton and Grimwood are unfailingly musical, they don’t electrify in the manner of Rostropovich and Argerich.
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