Martinu wrote a fair quantity of music for cello, but these three sonatas are undoubtedly the finest. Just how fine the First and Third Sonatas are did not, I have to confess, strike me until I heard Steven Isserlis and Peter Evans's performances on this disc. The Chuchro/Hala versions on Supraphon have their strengths, but what I find I remember best is their rich colouring of certain distinctive episodes; what Isserlis and Evans achieve is, I feel, more profound, they show that each of these works is a continuous musical argument. Here the colours are prevailingly darker the mood on the whole more urgent. Some will find interpretations less friendly, but the gains are considerable: there's greater rhythmic vitality here (an indispensible element in Martinu) and Isserlis's feeling for the grand sweep of Martinu's long lines gives the music a fundamental firmness that it often lacks in performance.
Certainly these works emerge as sterner stuff than they do in the Supraphon version, but if that gives the impression that Isserlis and Evans's use of colour is in any way less subtle, I'd better correct it at once. Take the opening of the Third Sonata: Evans's opening chords are massive and sonorous at first, but the splendour quickly fades—enter Isserlis, cool and restrained, but growing in warmth and tone weight towards the first climax. From the entry of the cello onwards it's like watching a black and white picture that slowly but steadily acquires colour. The performances are full of subtleties like this.
One clear advantage of the Hyperion disc is the recording—not quite so immediate as the Supraphon but giving a much clearer cello line. Chuchro is placed in front of the piano, Isserlis however is slightly to the left: it isn't what you'd expect in concert, but it does prevent the cello from drowning in great washes of piano tone. No doubts as to the recommendation here.'