The two sonatas by Johannes Brahms belong to the Olympus of the repertoire for every cellist, where, together with the suites by Bach and the sonatas by Beethoven, they virtually form the Trinity of our Old Testament. My own journey to these works began sometime in the 1980s and is – of course – still ongoing. I have had the opportunity to play both sonatas with many great pianists and thus get to know them from just as many different musical perspectives. Of course, I grew up with countless outstanding recordings, including a largely unknown one of the F Major Sonata by my own teacher William Pleeth with his wife, Margaret Good, which would also one day deserve to be made available to the public again.

Little is known about the cellist and composer Johann Stiastny, and what is known contradicts each other in the sources. František Jan Št’astný, also known as Jean Stiasny or, indeed, Johann Stiastny, was probably born in Prague around 1764. In his standard work The Violoncello and Its History, Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski wrote that Stiastny’s cello works “are qualified to be placed amongst the best productions of the older Cello literature, as they contained effects which for that period were entirely novel.” Alexander Hülshoff and Martin Rummel, two celebrated cellists of our time, present premiere recordings of Stiastny’s Trois Duos Concertans, Op. 6, creating a unique album for cello lovers and collectors of rare 18th century repertoire.

Little is known about the cellist and composer Johann Stiastny, and what is known contradicts each other in the sources. It begins with his name: František Jan Št’astný, also known as Jean Stiasny or, indeed, Johann Stiastny, was probably born in Prague around 1764, as the son of oboist Jan Št’astný (and as younger brother of cellist Bernard Václav Št’astný). Fétis gives his birth year as 1774. He was a member of the Prague Theater Orchestra, a cellist in Mainz and Frankfurt, and a music director in Nuremberg. Given the English dedicatees of some of his works, it seems likely that he traveled – in addition to Paris – as far as London.

Andrea Zani (1696-1757) was active in his native northern Italy but his career included an extended period in Vienna in the 1730s, where he enjoyed the patronage of Count von Schönborn. These 12 cello concertos survive in manuscript parts in the Schönborn archive and have been rediscovered by Zani’s biographer, the New Zealand musicologist Jill Ward. They make a notable addition to the 18th-century cello repertoire; the idiom is quite Vivaldian but tending towards the decorative elegance characteristic of the middle of the 1700s and demonstrating a distinctive, pleasing melodic quality.