Sir Donald Tovey: Chamber Music, Volume Three: The Complete Cello Sonatas

Discovery Club Members Save 30%!
Login or Join Today
£8.00£14.00

Catalogue No: TOCC0497
EAN/UPC: 5060113444974
Release Date: 2022-08-05
Composer: Sir Donald Tovey
Artists: Alice Neary, Gretel Dowdeswell, Kate Gould

Sir Donald Tovey (1875–1940), long hailed as one of the finest writers on music in English, saw himself primarily as a composer. His occasionally turbulent friendship with Pau Casals was the spur for a monumental concerto and one of his three cello sonatas: for solo cello, two cellos and cello with piano. The cello was the ideal instrument for Tovey’s Brahmsian musical language, with its long, singing lines unfolding in effortless counterpoint – though the huge passacaglia that ends the solo sonata also demands a virtuoso technique. The brief Bach arrangement recorded here for the first time arose when the twelve-year-old Tovey added a cello line to one of Bach’s best-known preludes, originally for lute.

Alice Neary, cello
Kate Gould, cello (Tracks 1–3)
Gretel Dowdeswell, piano (Tracks 4, 8–10)

Listen To This Recording:

    Sonata for Two Cellos in G major (1912)

  1. I Allegro
  2. II Andante maestoso e sostenuto
  3. J. S. Bach arr. Tovey (1887)*

  4. III Fuga. Allegretto giocoso
  5. Prelude in C minor, BWV999
  6. Sonata for Solo Cello in D major, Op. 30 (c. 1912)

  7. I Allegro con brio ma largamente
  8. II Allegretto, un poco agitato, ma sempre piano
  9. III Passacaglia
  10. Sonata for Cello and Piano in F major, Op. 4 (1900)

  11. I Allegrissimo
  12. II Andante cantabile
  13. III Finale: Vivace giocoso ma non presto

* FIRST RECORDING
FIRST COMPLETE RECORDING

1 review for Sir Donald Tovey: Chamber Music, Volume Three: The Complete Cello Sonatas

  1. :

    Alice Neary and Kate Gould play with eloquence and control of the [sonata for two cellos] music’s shifting patterns. […]

    Neary plays it [sonata for solo cello] with admirable stamina, tonal richness and technical finesse.

    With an expertly judged recording and customarily fine, and extensive, booklet notes this disc continues the Tovey chamber music series in some style.’

    —Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Add a review

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *