Two of the twentieth century’s supreme chamber musicians captured at the height of their powers. These recordings, made at Pablo Casals’s Festival in Prades and Perpignan in 1951, are among the most celebrated accounts of Beethoven’s complete cello sonatas ever committed to disc. Casals had founded the Prades Festival in 1950, breaking a years-long self-imposed silence in protest at the international community’s continued recognition of Franco’s Spain; the festival drew the finest musicians in the world to the French Pyrenees where he had settled in exile. Rudolf Serkin was among those who answered the call, and their partnership produced performances of uncommon authority and musical intelligence.
The Five Sonatas
Beethoven’s five cello sonatas span virtually his entire creative life. The two early Op. 5 works (1796) are ambitious compositions that gave the cello a genuinely equal voice alongside the piano. The celebrated Op. 69 Sonata in A major (1808) is among the most lyrical works Beethoven wrote, a piece of warmth and intimate dialogue between the two instruments. The two late sonatas of Op. 102 (1815) inhabit a different world entirely: terse, harmonically bold, and imbued with the austere intensity of his final period. Casals and Serkin navigate all five with unflinching conviction and musical intelligence.