BRAHMS: Sonatas for Cello & Piano - Aldo Parisot, Elizabeth Sawyer

brahms cello MHS STYLE liner notes

The fruit of Brahms’ creativity, like that of his great forebears Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, often tended to grow in clusters. The evidence to support such a contention is both abundant and conclusive: The three early Sonatas for Piano, Opp. 1, 2 and 5; two Piano Quartets, Opp. 25 and 26; two Clarinet Sonatas,Op. 120; the first two String Quartets, Op. 51 and the last two Sonatas for Violin and Piano (both of which were obviously sequels to the first, in G Major, written six years earlier ). A generality which does not apply to the two compositions here recorded. Brahms Sonatas for Cello and Piano are separated in his chronology by more than twenty years, and though the two works are often, ashere, juxtaposed for reasons of convenience, each is a loner a self-sufficient and contained entity unto itself with an aesthetic personality all its own.