Fournier & Beethoven's cello sonatas

[Guest]

I 'learned' Beethoven's cello sonatas from cassettes of performances by Pierre Fournier and Wilhelm Kempff which I used to play on a Sony Walkman. I grew extremely fond of these sometimes reserved, sometimes heartfelt performances, a great partnership.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Music-Cello-L-Van/dp/B000001GY1/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1327180430&sr=1-1

And then I discovered that Fournier had recorded them earlier with the young Friedrich Gulda - what a find! Certainly different but to the same 'groundplan' I thought.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/search.php?searchString=Fournier+Gulda

And then the other evening I was looking through Spotify and discovered that it had the EMI Fournier ICON boxed set available, with performance of all the Beethoven cello sonatas - Kempff or Gulda, I wondered?

But no! Joy of joys! An even earlier set with ... Artur Schnabel! I have only sampled the very first sonata but the recording is clean, clear & decent and the playing is full of wonderful singing tone and line from both of these great artists.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aristocrat-Cellists-Pierre-Fournier/dp/B003D0ZODW/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1327180671&sr=1-1

Shouild you decide to follow my path, I hope that you derive as much pleasure from all these great recordings from the great French master cellist and his pianist friends as I have.

Are there others sets of these marvellous works that you admire?

[Don Petter]

In no particular order (except alphabetical):

Janigro/Demus
Piatigorsky/Solomon
Rostropovich/Richter
Starker/Bogin
Starker/Sebok

Marvellous works, indeed, which can bear a variety of interpretations.

[Bryn]

I 'learned' Beethoven's cello sonatas from cassettes of performances by Pierre Fournier and Wilhelm Kempff which I used to play on a Sony Walkman. I grew extremely fond of these sometimes reserved, sometimes heartfelt performances, a great partnership.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Music-Cello-L-Van/dp/B000001GY1/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1327180430&sr=1-1

And then I discovered that Fournier had recorded them earlier with the young Friedrich Gulda - what a find! Certainly different but to the same 'groundplan' I thought.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/search.php?searchString=Fournier+Gulda

And then the other evening I was looking through Spotify and discovered that it had the EMI Fournier ICON boxed set available, with performance of all the Beethoven cello sonatas - Kempff or Gulda, I wondered?

But no! Joy of joys! An even earlier set with ... Artur Schnabel! I have only sampled the very first sonata but the recording is clean, clear & decent and the playing is full of wonderful singing tone and line from both of these great artists.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aristocrat-Cellists-Pierre-Fournier/dp/B003D0ZODW/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1327180671&sr=1-1

Shouild you decide to follow my path, I hope that you derive as much pleasure from all these great recordings from the great French master cellist and his pianist friends as I have.

Too late for me. It's a past I trod a couple of years ago.

Are there others sets of these marvellous works that you admire?

Oh, yes. A couple of sets from Wispelwey, and another pair from Bylsma spring to mind, then of course there are those from Rostropovich and Richter (live on DVD, and studio on CD).

[Oops. Sorry, it seems the Rostropovich/Richter DVD is now rather hard to find. More glad then ever that I got it while is was not only around, but a bargain at £10.]

[Stanley Stewart]

I assume, Bryn, that the Rostropovich/Richter DVD is the Legendary 1964 Edinburgh Festival Concerts at the Usher Hall. Indeed, I was working at the Gateway Theatre in Auld Reekie at the time and managed to attend the first performance but rehearsal demands prevented me from being at the second concert of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas. Some years later, I did an off-air video of both concerts and they are now on DVD, complementing the more recent "Rostropovich - Genius of the Cello" on BBC 4, together with "Soldiers of Music - Rostropovich Returns to Russia"
(1990) on C4. Rich archive documents - all of 'em.