American Works for Cello and Piano

Having explored much of twentieth-century British works for cello and piano, the Watkins brothers now turn their attention to the American contribution to this repertoire.

 The music spans a fascinating period of some four decades of intensive compositional activity in the United-States. The earliest piece in the collection, Barber’s Cello Sonata (1932), was for many years considered as the only modern work in the genre. It is imbued with an intensely romantic spirit utterly different from the folk-tinged nationalism of contemporaneous music by Copland, represented here by arrangements of two numbers from his popular cowboy ballet Billy the Kid.

 Carter’s highly original and technically demanding Cello Sonata and Crumb’s idiosyncratic Sonata for Solo Cello are worlds apart from the traditional vein of Barber piece. The works marked watershed moments in the stylistic development of two of the most imaginative and distinctive creative voices of their time.

 Lastly, the ‘Meditations’ offer a contrast between searing melancholy and moments of jazzy dynamism, typical of Bernstein’s stylistic eclecticism.