Wallfisch/Callaghan - Roger Sacheverell Coke: Cello Sonatas

These sonatas display an ambiguous blend of romantic lyricism and grave chromaticism, with cello and piano treated as equal partners with solo passages for the pianist punctuating the musical discourse. Coke exploits extremes of register in both instruments: high spare unison passages in the piano, at times seeming to prefigure late Shostakovich, and rich, dark sonorities in the cello. The range demanded of the cellist is especially wide in all three cello sonatas, with some high-lying passages notated at extreme dynamics...