Moscheles & Hummel - Cello Sonatas - Hyperion: CDA67521 - CD or download

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With such strong, sympathetic playing and clear, carefully-balanced recordings this Hyperion disc is a must for adventurous cellists and listeners alike — BBC Music Magazine More…

Release Date: 3rd Apr 2006
Catalogue No: CDA67521
Label: Hyperion
Length: 64 minutes

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Moscheles: Cello Sonata in E major Op. 121

Work length33:19

$4.40

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Jirí Bárta (cello), Hamish Milne (piano)

I. Allegro espressivo e appassionato

Track length11:14

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II. Scherzo 'ballabile': Allegretto quasi allegro

Track length5:44

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III. Ballade 'in böhmische Weise': Andantino

Track length9:21

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IV. Allegro vivace, ma non troppo

Track length7:00

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Moscheles: Melodisch-contrapunktische Studien, Op 137

Work length8:20

$3.30

$4.50

$6.15

Jirí Bárta (cello), Hamish Milne (piano)

IV. Andante con moto espressivo 'Well-tempered Klavier II Prelude No 7 in E flat major'

Track length3:23

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VIII. Allegro maestoso 'Well-tempered Klavier II Prelude No 6 in D minor'

Track length1:46

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IX. Andante espressivo 'Well-tempered Klavier I Prelude No 4 in C sharp minor'

Track length3:11

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Hummel, J: Cello Sonata in A major, Op. 104

Work length23:08

$3.30

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$6.15

Jirí Bárta (cello), Hamish Milne (piano)

I. Allegro amabile e grazioso

Track length11:04

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II. Romanze: Un poco adagio e con espressione

Track length5:56

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III. Rondo: Allegro vivace un poco

Track length6:08

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About

Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ignaz Moscheles were frequently bracketed together in their day as the two piano virtuosos by whombefore the brilliant star of Liszt rose on the horizonother performers might be measured. Moscheles wrote his rich and virtuosic cello sonata in 1850/1, treating the piano and cello as equals. In movement three, subtitled in Bohemian manner, he reflects on his childhood in Prague with a rhythmic, folk-like melody that follows the form of a dumka. The sonata is dedicated to his friend and musical admirer Robert Schumann, who wrote thanking Moscheles saying: You have given me joy and done me honour with the dedication of your sonata. More than thirty years ago in Carlsbad, when I was quite unknown to you, I refused to part with a concert ticket for a long time because you had touched it, so I kept it as if it were a relic. Little did I dream that I would be honoured in this way by so famous a master. Please accept my deepest gratitude! Moscheles was also something of a pioneer and was keen to awaken an interest in composers such as Bach, Handel and Scarlatti who he felt were being unduly neglected. In 1864 he published a set of so-called Melodisch-contrapunktische Studien, making use of ten preludes from Bachs Well-tempered Clavier and adding a cello obbligato. Hummels graceful Cello Sonata in A major is romantic, spacious and immediately attractive. It glides along with the cello expressively singing over a rippling piano accompaniment; and the contrasting extrovert final pages of the third movement provide an exuberant ending. This is Jir Bartas first recording on Hyperion.

Reviews

With such strong, sympathetic playing and clear, carefully-balanced recordings this Hyperion disc is a must for adventurous cellists and listeners alike

2010

Hummel and Moscheles make an apt pair: each was a keyboard virtuoso who wrote prolifically.
Yet where Hummel has been well represented on disc lately, Moscheles is far more neglected.
That makes the new issue specially valuable.
Their careers overlapped, but Moscheles lived for 33 years more after Hummel died, actively composing till the last. The works here appeared some three decades apart – not that the stylistic contrast is at all marked, for both adopted an easily lyrical style celebrating the early 19th rather than the 18th century, with Mendelssohn more of an influence than Mozart.
This is particularly so in Moscheles's Cello Sonata of 1850-51, with one or two echoes of the Mendelssohn Octet and with a Scherzo marked ballabile, sparkling in the way one expects of Mendelssohn. The younger composer, a close friend, also influenced Moscheles in his devotion to Bach, represented here by the three Melodic-Contrapuntal Studies, involving flowing melodic writing for the cello neatly fitted to Bach's original keyboard Preludes.
Following tradition, Moscheles gives priority to the piano over the cello in describing the work, not surprising from a pianist-composer, and this recording rather brings that out; the sensitive cellist, Jirí Bárta, is regularly overshadowed.
What is more unexpected is how the last two movements echo Czech music, not just in the rhythms and melodic shapes of some of the themes but in the alternation of speeds; that suggests that Moscheles was influenced by the Czech dumka. The Sonata is rounded off with a dashing movement in which Moscheles encourages the pianist to show off in several passages.
Otherwise this is a work designed for intimate music-making, and that is even more clearly so in the Hummel Sonata, which opens with a tripletime Allegro amabile. 'Amiable' is an apt description of the piece, not just in that lyrical first movement but the central Romanze which is rather like early Beethoven. Here, too, there are echoes of the music of eastern Europe in the finale, maybe influenced by Hummel's tours of Russia and Poland.
Though it is a pity that Bárta is not presented as a full equal to Milne (who plays brilliantly), the recording balance is largely to blame. An attractive disc nonetheless.

Bárta and Milne strike just the right note: these aren’t bravura pieces, and they play them as would two friends convivially making music in the drawing-room and deriving unemphatic pleasure from the experience … a delightfully demure, teasingly tuneful release, which has brought me
much pleasure

Moscheles & Hummel - Cello Sonatas

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