After J.S. Bach’s solo cello suites in the early 18th century, the genre experienced a fallow period until Zoltán Kodály set the pace with a monumental Sonata for solo cello in 1915. It inspired a variety of similar works, but Kodály’s 30-minute sonata still stands ‘like Mount Everest’, to quote Daniel Müller-Schott, the soloist on this recording. His programme also includes music by Prokofiev, Hindemith, Henze, Crumb and Casals, and features a work of his own for the first time: Cadenza continues the tradition of compositions that other cellists have always added to their recital programmes.

“Here, you can recognise influences of the solo works that have influenced me over the years. In Cadenza, the contrasting elements of the world of my instrument appear in the closest space – the cello in pure lyricism, just as sequences catapulting themselves into the highest registers in rhythmical savagery and immediately concluding the movement after a final culmination.” – Daniel Müller-Schott

Reviews

Even today, it’s unusual to hear Kodály’s stupendous Op 8 Sonata played with such precision, such aplomb and such effortless finesse. ... I doubt, too, that there are more nuanced or atmospheric accounts in existence of Hindemith’s brooding Sonata or the nine Shakespeare-inspired miniatures that make up Henze’s Serenade. ... Müller-Schott’s ability to inflect a single line of music makes even works such as Prokofiev’s slightly dubious reconstructed Sonata and his own entertainingly eclectic Cadenza repay re-listening. Richard Bratby

Gramophone March 2020