Coke: Cello Sonatas
Raphael Wallfisch (cello), Simon Callaghan (piano)
No lost masterpieces, but a thoughtful, quietly individual voice does emerge with repeated hearings. Inquisitive readers can rest assured that Callaghan and the admirable Raphael Wallfisch strain...
Coke: Cello Sonatas
Raphael Wallfisch (cello), Simon Callaghan (piano)
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No lost masterpieces, but a thoughtful, quietly individual voice does emerge with repeated hearings. Inquisitive readers can rest assured that Callaghan and the admirable Raphael Wallfisch strain...
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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…
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Awards and reviews
February 2020
No lost masterpieces, but a thoughtful, quietly individual voice does emerge with repeated hearings. Inquisitive readers can rest assured that Callaghan and the admirable Raphael Wallfisch strain every sinew in their passionate advocacy of Roger Sacheverell Coke. First-rate sound and expert balance, too.
January 2020
I can’t imagine greater advocates than the Wallfisch-Callaghan team. The duo explores every facet of Coke’s music and that includes passages of ambiguity, and of unresolved, indeed seemingly irresolvable emotive dilemmas.