Beethoven: Sonatas for Fortepiano and Cello, Vol. 1

Bruno Cocset, an eminent ambassador of the Baroque cello, here makes a teenage dream come true: to record the Beethoven sonatas. ‘When we rediscover it from the inside, this music overwhelms us: its art of the mise en abyme, its ability to deviate from the formal scheme, to dare to go as far as the uncontrolled surge of frenzy or the break in tempo . . . On the part of a champion of the metronome (Beethoven took a hand in its creation), this imperious seizure of freedom creates immeasurable spaces, thrusting performer and listener into unknown, unforeseen depths . . . The piano and the cello are bound together throughout the narrative by a fertile, pungent, exhilarating complementarity.’ At the fortepiano, a longstanding musical partner, Maude Gratton, plays two different instruments, chosen according to the character of each sonata: a Viennese piano after Johann Andreas Stein and an original John Broadwood from 1822, a model that circulated in Vienna and which Beethoven himself played. In order to tackle this repertory at the cusp of Classicism and Romanticism, Bruno Cocset commissioned a new cello from another faithful partner.