Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 5 No. 1

David Geringas is one of today’s most respected cellists. His intellectual rigor, stylistic versatility and warm tone have earned him accolades the world over. This is an important addition to the chamber music discography.

GRAMMY award winning pianist Lambert Orkis and Principal cellist for the National Symphony Orchestra, David Hardy, have delivered an entirely new way to hear this spectacular repertoire. This 4 disc set provides the listener with 2 completely different listening experiences for these pieces. First, the works are performed as they are most often heard in performance today, on a modern piano and the cello strung with steel strings. Next, the listener is transported into the time that the works were originally written with a second complete performance on 3 period correct forte pianos, and with the cello now strung with traditional gut strings.

Both performers, who are each masters of modern and period performance practice, contribute to the accompanying notes for the album, and both provide into the question, "why two complete performances?"

To celebrate the 85th anniversary of the Russian maestro’s birth on 27 March 2012, Decca have collated all the recordings he made for Decca and Philips into one stunning 5CD box set. A must not only for students of the cello, but also for all who appreciate exemplary musicianship.

On the occasion of Esther Nyffenegger’s 70th birthday, DIVOX presents the box «En fête Opus 1» with her recordings that document the great breadth of 19th century chamber music for cello. These outstanding interpretations were recorded between 1974 and 1978 and in 2000.

Esther Nyffenegger, is acclaimed by critics for her clear and valiant tone and the passion of her playing. In the course of her career, she was solo cellist of the Lucerne Festival Strings, won a second prize at the ‘Casals Competition’ and the Soloist’s Prize of the ‘Swiss Musicians’ Association’. She has been teaching continuously from the early 1970s to this day, at first in Winterthur and Lucerne; for a long time she also held a guest chair at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts. She gave the world premiere of the Cello Concerto by H. Sutermeister, which the composer dedicated to her, as well as the world premiere of Hans Pfitzner’s Cello Concerto, written in 1888 but considered lost until very recently.

Born in Eger in what is now the Czech Republic to Russian immigrants in 1903, Rudolf Serkin became one of the truly great performers of classical and romantic piano music. This 10-CD set - which features recordings that he made between 1932 and 1959 of works by Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Strauss and Bach - form an impressive example of his creative art. It also includes recordings of Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas made with Pablo Casals and performances given with his father-in-law, the great violinist Adolf Busch, with whom Rudolf Serkin performed chamber music at the highest level for more than 30 years.