This debut album opens with cellist Taeguk Mun - winner of the 2014 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition and the 2016 János Starker Foundation Award - playing Bach's Suite for Solo Cello No 1. He is then joined by the pianist Chi Ho Han, another multi-award-winning musician from South Korea, for Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Major and short pieces by Schumann, Schubert, Rubinstein and Pablo Casals.

Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud's first solo album since leaving her 20-year gig with the celebrated Kronos Quartet finds her exploring areas that aren't exactly a huge departure from the type of edgy modern music she played with her old group, but it does show what she can do when given her own space to work with. The results are impressive. Most of the compositions are for solo cello with looped cello parts captured digitally or on tape, while one is written for cello and computer-generated sounds and another for cello and "electronics." The composers are a combination of names familiar (Steve Mackey, Philip Glass, Hamza el Din) and new (Mark Grey, Jeanrenaud herself), and while the pieces aren't all equally interesting there are several works of stunning beauty here. One of the most engaging is el Din's "Escalay + 17:10," with its looped Egyptian melodies, and another is Jeanrenaud's own "Altar Piece," which makes extensive use of electronic tone alteration and layering, and on which she exercises masterful control of whispery artificial harmonics. But the album's highlight is a piece by Karen Tanaka entitled "Song of Songs." Inspired by the Old Testament book of the same name, which is essentially an extended love song, Tanaka builds a sweet, simple, and beautifully textured work out of cello and computer-generated sounds. As always, Jeanrenaud's playing is virtuosic but never showy. Highly recommended.

The personal story of the cello played braced against the shoulder (violoncello da spalla) began when Sergey Malov first listened to a vinyl recording of Bach's cello suites played by the legendary Pablo Casals from his father's collection. Later on, when listening to the recordings he could not get rid of the feeling that this light and dancing music does not fit that well with such a heavy big instrument as a cello. Although perhaps he just wanted to play these amazing pieces himself. Malov was dreaming about playing them authentically. He had no idea though what that authentic way was or how he could place such a huge bass instrument on his shoulder.

Barbirolli made later recordings of all the works on this CD and these have become cornerstones of the catalogue. These are earlier recordings that he did with his own orchestra, the Halle, in the 1950s. To start with, the recording quality is pretty amazing. They were recorded on 35mm film tape rather than half inch recording tape by the Mercury team and have astonishing immediacy and amazingly lifelike. Barbirolli uses an organ in the finale of the Enigma Variations. The recording is a little bass heavy but this is a small caveat. For people who consider Barbirolli to be a bit indulgent as a conductor, these recordings may come as a surprise. The performances are very direct and nicely flowing. They therefore complement rather than compete with the later recordings. Of course, Barbirolli's later recording of the Cello Concerto with Jacqueline du Pre is a very famous and special rendition of the work. However, it is not without its detractors. Andre Navarra, by contrast, plays with golden tone. He plays gorgeously. Highly recommended.

Chandos’s previous Prokofiev series, recorded in the 80s with Neëme Järvi and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is still probably the most recommendable complete cycle available. Chandos now seem to feel the need to start again, the reason possibly being that they are now using ‘authentically’ all-Russian forces. Whatever the company’s motivation (or if indeed it is to be a complete cycle), the results are impressively powerful, and the coupling stimulating and generous.

Alexander Ivashkin’s bold, confident cello-playing is the thread running through these works; he partners the organist Malcolm Hicks in the 1979 In croce, plays the Ten Preludes for the solo instrument from 1979, and leads a quartet of cellos in the remarkable Quaternion. Though many of Sofia Gubaidulina’s works have a religious dimension, In croce does not, despite its title; ‘On the cross’ refers to the way in which the two instruments exchange roles during the work, the cello beginning with microtones in the lowest register and gradually rising to a high diatonic end, while the organ starts off high in a pure A major and descends to the depths to a cluster that gradually collapses when the instrument’s blower is turned off. Though the Ten Preludes stretch the player’s capabilities to the maximum, they remain more or less within the conventional resources of the instrument. But Quaternion creates a whole new, ethereal, sound-world in which the cellos are tuned in pairs a quarter-tone apart, the players wear thimbles on their fingers in one section, and the music is persistently coloured by harmonics.

Inspired by a general love of the tango, and more specifically the tango of Astor Piazzolla, on the part of Yo-Yo Ma, the Soul of the Tango album is a masterful work of the nuevo tango, played by Ma's cello and many of Piazzolla's former associates. Piazzolla's old guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad even showed up to work on a pair of tracks arranged by Sergio: the Tango Suite (consisting of Andante and Allegro). The sheer beauty of one of Piazzolla's tangos is generally enough to warrant the purchase of an album involving them. An album such as this one, where all of the songs (save one: Tango Remembrances, where Ma plays along with outtakes from Piazzolla's recording of The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night album) are compositions by Piazzolla is even better. Add to this the masterful playing of Ma, and the surprising facility in which the cello fits into the tango, and you've got what could become a classic album, if only it weren't on the classical label from Sony.

Nine cello sonatas by Vivaldi have survived. Six of them were published as a set in Paris in about 1740; that set, mistakenly known as the composer's Op. 14, contains the sonatas recorded in this release. The three remaining sonatas come from manuscript collections. All but one of the six works are cast in the slow-fast-slow-fast pattern of movements of the sonata da chiesa. The odd one out, RV46, in fact, retains the four movement sequence but inclines towards the sonata da camera in the use of dance titles. The music of these sonatas is almost consistently interesting, often reaching high points of expressive eloquence, as we find, for example, in the justifiably popular Sonata in E minor, RV40. Christophe Coin brings to life these details in the music with technical assurance and a spirit evidently responsive to its poetic content. Particularly affecting instances of this occur in the third movements of the A minor and the E minor Sonatas where Coin shapes each phrase, lovingly achieving at the same time a beautifully sustained cantabile.

This album features cello concertos by Witold LutosIawski and Henri Dutilleux performed by the multiple prize-winning German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Thomas Sondergard. These works, premiered in 1970, are two of the biggest gems of the twentieth century, the golden age of the cello. While equally virtuosic and engaging, both pieces showcase different aspects of the musical landscape of the late twentieth century.

The DVD delivers the band's full two-hour concert at the renowned Finnish Savonlinna Opera Festival in the breathtaking scenery of Olavinlinna Castle, featuring previously unreleased METALLICA covers.

Two decades ago, APOCALYPTICA's first and most important album, "Plays Metallica By Four Cellos", was released, selling over 1.5 million copies to date and leading to a carefully remastered, critically acclaimed new album version with three bonus tracks in 2016.

Steven Isserlis’s award-winning discography spans his diverse interests in repertoire and his musicological enthusiasm, as well as demonstrating his supreme artistry and uniquely beautiful sound, and his first recording of the complete Bach cello suites is an indelibly important addition to the set. Steven writes that ‘the Bach suites are works of such total perfection, such sublimity, that it is well-nigh impossible to feel ready for them’. He has proved more than adequate to the task and this release is a triumphant conclusion to an artistic pilgrimage. Steven’s eloquent booklet notes reveal his personal thoughts about the suites, as well as extensive academic research.

In the '80s there were those listeners who thought that Heinrich Schiff might redeem cello performance practice from fatal beauty and lethal elegance. Aside from the burly and brawny Rostropovich, more and more cellists were advocating a performance style whose ideals were perfect intonation and graceful phrasing. In some repertoire, say, Fauré, these are perfectly legitimate goals. In other repertoire, Beethoven and Brahms, say, it is a terrible mistake. In Bach's Cello Suites, as the fay and fragile Yo-Yo Ma recordings make clear, it was a terminal mistake. Not so in Schiff's magnificently muscular 1984 recordings of the suites: Schiff's rhythms, his tempos, his tone, his intonation, and especially his interpretations were anything but fay or fragile. In Schiff's performance, Bach's Cello Suites are not the neurasthenic music of a composer supine with dread and despair in the dark midnight of the soul, but the forceful music of a mature composer in full control of himself and his music.

Shostakovich's Cello Sonata belied the young composer's reputation as the 'enfant terrible' of early Soviet music. Steven Isserlis's praises it as ''the most popular cello sonata of the twentieth century.'' It features on this program alongside two other Russian masterpieces from pre-Revolutionary Prokofiev and Khrushchev era Kabalevsky.

Een driedubbele cd met het integrale werk voor cello en pianoforte van Ludwig Van Beethoven, dat is het resultaat van de intense muzikale samenwerking van celliste France Springuel en pianist Jan Vermeulen. De twee begonnen drie jaar geleden samen te musiceren en de muzikale klik die beiden toen voelden, deed hen besluiten om het repertoire voor cello en piano aan te pakken. Eerst waren er twee Schubertcd's, dan volgde Schumann, en nu is er dus Beethoven. De sonate voor cello en piano is in feite een uitvinding van Beethoven zelf.