To Brahms, with Love (2018)

It's pretty hard to find a performance line that goes as directly back to a work's composer as the one here: Israeli cellist Amit Peled not only plays a cello owned for many years by Pablo Casals (known as the 1733 Goffriller cello, it may actually have been built in 1700), he studied with Casals' student Bernard Greenhouse, of the Beaux Arts Trio, and Casals played one of the cello sonatas here for Brahms himself at the beginning of his career. Presumably, Brahms did nothing to discourage the youngster. What's most ... Read More

It's pretty hard to find a performance line that goes as directly back to a work's composer as the one here: Israeli cellist Amit Peled not only plays a cello owned for many years by Pablo Casals (known as the 1733 Goffriller cello, it may actually have been built in 1700), he studied with Casals' student Bernard Greenhouse, of the Beaux Arts Trio, and Casals played one of the cello sonatas here for Brahms himself at the beginning of his career. Presumably, Brahms did nothing to discourage the youngster. What's most important is that Peled creates a fair facsimile of Casals' own way with Brahms. It's not a note-for-note reproduction of Casals, which would be a rather pointless exercise; Peled and pianist Noreen Polera rein in Casals' emotionalism a bit. But sample the first movement of the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99, where Peled perfectly captures the trinity of forward motion, intensely passionate expression, and structural intelligence that characterized Casals' playing. The sound, from... Read Less