Britten, Prokofiev & Shostakovich: The Cello Sonatas

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This new CD by Daniel Mu¨ller-Schott and Francesco Piemontesi offers three sonatas for cello and piano, works that sum up several chapters of 20th c. history that go far beyond the merely musical. Sergei Prokofiev displays a masterly serenity in his songlike Sonata in C, op. 119, composed in 1949. It makes evident his adjustment to the cultural politics of the Soviet Union – to which this world-famous composer had returned just twelve years before – but is also tailor-made for an exceptional cello-piano duo. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Sonata in d minor, op. 40 is no less marked by fate. It was on the program of a concert tour given by the composer and his cello partner Viktor Kubatsky in 1936 when Shostakovich was put on the Stalinist index of undesirables, on orders from the very top. Finally, Benjamin Britten’s Sonata in C, op. 65 marked the beginning of a productive, creative friendship with Rostropovich that was established, despite many a problem posed by the Cold War, in Aldeburgh in 1961 when performed by the composer and Rostropovich.