Composer: Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Claude Achille Debussy, Leoš Janáček
Performer: Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA560
Release: 2022
Size: 1.15 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Bridge: Cello Sonata in D minor, H125
01. I. Allegro ben moderato
02. II. Adagio ma non troppo – Molto allegro agitato
Britten: Sonata for cello and piano in C major, Op. 65
03. I. Dialogo (Allegro)
04. II. Scherzo-Pizzicato (Allegretto)
05. III. Elegia (Lento)
06. IV. Marcia (Energico)
07. V. Moto perpetuo (Presto)
Debussy: Cello Sonata
08. I. Prologue (Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto)
09. II. Sérénade (Modérément animé)
10. III. Final (Animé, léger et nerveux)
Janáček: Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for Cello and Piano
11. I. Con moto
12. II. Con moto
13. III. Allegro
The great Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk makes a triumphal return to chamber music with his regular piano partner Håvard Gimse. The programme features two English composers, Benjamin Britten and his teacher Frank Bridge, whose Cello Sonata was written during the First World War and is tinged with despair and searing emotional force. Britten composed his Cello Sonata in 1961, following his meeting with Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom he dedicated the work.
Another person traumatised by the Great War was Debussy, who wrote: ‘it was cowardly to think only of the horrors being committed, without trying to react by rebuilding, insofar as my strength allowed, a little of that beauty which is currently under attack’. His Cello Sonata (1915) was the first of a series of six sonatas for various instruments that he planned to compose, only managing to write three before his death. As a determined Moravian nationalist, Janáček did not entitle his three-movement work of 1910 ‘sonata’; he called it Pohádka (“Fairy tale”) and based it on a poem by Vasily Zhukovsky.