This is a fascinating coupling. Frank Bridge is well-known as Benjamin Britten's teacher and sadly less so for his compositions. His darkly brooding, impassioned Cello Sonata was written during 1913-1917, in the shadow of the First World War, which had agonised his pacifist soul. On the other side of the English Channel, Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952), daughter of a Concertgebouw first cellist, wrote her Cello Sonata in 1919, in the aftermath of the war in Holland. She later became a great friend of Britten. There are some musical parallels; both began their composing careers as late Romantics, were initially influenced by French music by Debussy, Fauré and Ravel and each later modernised their styles. Neither of the cello sonatas is fashioned for mere entertainment, rather they sing of things changed and things lost; contemplate war's cruelty, recall sweet memories and perhaps offer some future hope.

As a young duo, cellist Mayke Rademakers and pianist Matthijs Verschoor share powerful musical bonds in their rapport as partners and their aim to produce deeply-considered, fully-committed interpretations. Rademakers plays a modern cello by Stefan Krattenmacher. She studied with William Pleeth in London, and has a growing international solo career, as does Matthijs Verschoor. Comparison of their reading of the Bridge sonata on this disc with the renowned Britten/Rostropovich performance yielded little to the older masters.

The Bridge Cello Sonata is in two sections, but really encompasses several 'movements' in each. Helpfully, Quintone have separately tracked the longish Adagio section of part one. The work's rhapsodic and lyrical intensity is beautifully captured, emotions pass fluently from one player to the other and they excel in exploring its seams of rich colour and texture. Moments of repose are also relished, the duo switching seamlessly from heroic striving to delicate and tender paragraphs of infinite regret, with a naturalness of flow and onward movement which is captivating.

Bridge's miniatures (a heart-broken Elegy, dancingly carefree Serenade and self-communing Meditation) are gorgeous, and give full rein to Rademakers' singing tone, particularly in her cello's baritone register. They are given warm and self-effacing support from Matthijs Verschoor. However, I did feel that there was a rather short gap between end of the Sonata's last movement and the arrival of the miniatures; the same applied for the end of Bosman's Sonata and her lovely miniature, Nuit Calme.

Bosman's Cello Sonata begins Allegro maestoso with an arrestingly stern striding motive, the piano insistently tolling deep bell-like chords. As the work is in cyclic form, this reappears at the end of the last movement, a fiery headlong gallop in quintuple time, bringing about an affirmative ending which is most satisfying. The beauties of Bosman's piece are consistently darker and often much more assertive than Bridge's, and the players eloquently bring out these differences. Their performance makes convincing advocacy for the piece's restoration to the general cello repertoire.

The coupling works extremely well, with the sonatas reinforcing each other's powerful musical effect, and the committed playing makes this recording a great success. My only caveat is that the cello sound does not realistically sit in the same acoustic as the piano (the venue being the Bachzaal in Amsterdam) because of somewhat close microphone placing. This does not, thankfully, give the cello an overly resonant double bass sound in its lower register, or give it too large a sonic image.

A feast for lovers of late romantic cello music. Highly recommended.

Copyright © 2009 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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