Spencer Myer Archive

BRAHMS: Cello Sonatas ‒ Brian Thornton, cello / Spencer Myer, piano ‒ Steinway & Sons

by Audiophile Audition | Aug 16, 2017 | Classical CD Reviews

BRAHMS: Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38; Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99 ‒ Brian Thornton, cello / Spencer Myer, piano ‒ Steinway & Sons 30081, 55:29 (6/16/17) ****  If you like your Brahms with drive and interpretive forthrightness. . . . While the First Sonata leaves me a bit cold, the Second Sonata is far and away my favorite Brahms sonata and probably my favorite cello sonata period. In a way, the two works are mirror images of each other. Sonata No. 1 was the first sonata that Brahms wrote for piano and another instrument. Originally, it was supposed to have four movements just like Sonata No. 2, but somewhere along the line Brahms decided to scrap the slow movement; the piece ended up with three more-or-less fast movements. Some scholars believe that the projected slow movement was not scrapped at all but became the second movement of Sonata No. 2 written more than twenty years later. The First Sonata begins with a rather lugubrious theme played in the cello’s lowest register; in contrast, the Second Sonata starts impetuously, with churning tremolos in the piano, over which the cello rises to its very […]