Matt Haimovitz’s Venetian cello was made by Matteo Gofriller in 1710, ten years before J. S. Bach put pen to paper for his six solo cello suites. Domenico Gabrielli’s seven Ricercari, the direct precursors to Bach’s masterpieces, may have been the first notes heard on this extraordinary instrument.

The now infamous story of how J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations received their name – that Bach was asked to write them as a sleep aide of sorts for Count Kaiserling, whose assistant (Goldberg) would play music to help the Count fall asleep – has been found to be a somewhat unlikely and dubious account. Still, with few competing explanations, this at least makes for a good story. The variations have been analyzed and dissected by theoreticians, mathematicians, and even numerologists perhaps more than any other of Bach's works.

Mendelssohn's complete works for cello and piano fit on a single CD with room to spare, and your collection should have room to spare for the terrific performances contained on this disc. Cellist Elizabeth Dolin and pianist Bernadene Blaha emphasize the composer's classicism and elegance, in contrast to the somewhat wilder spin with which cellist Mark Shuman and pianist Todd Crow suffuse these works. But whereas the latter ASV release is resonant to a fault, Analekta's engineering conveys a more intimate and equally warm ambience that falls kindly on the ears. Dolin and Blaha are never less than equal partners, which is important considering that Mendelssohn treats both instruments as such. (Classics Today 10/10)

Vivaldi wrote an astonishing 500 concertos during his lifetime, of which 27 were composed for solo cello. At the time, the instrument was in its infancy, and it was unusual for great composers to write works specifically for solo cello. Indeed, none of the concertos were published during Vivaldi’s lifetime: they had been written specially for his young female students at the Ospedale della Pietà, where the composer was employed in Venice, and were therefore not widely known. However, Vivaldi clearly saw the potential in the new instrument, otherwise he would not have gone on to write so much material for it; after the violin and bassoon, it is his third most popular solo concerto instrument.

Markku Luolajan-Mikkola has a reputation for excellence and already has two Gramophone Awards. With a fan base to match, Luolajan-Mikkola is at the top of his game. In Luolajan-Mikkola’s Linn debut, he tackles the pinnacle of Bach’s productions for violinists: the Partitas and Sonatas. Luolajan-Mikkola transcribed these works for cello. His goal with this recording has been to encapsulate expression and emotion according to the character of each movement. A historically informed musician, he performs on baroque cello.

For their fourth Fuga Libera-project, the Russian orchestra Musica Viva recorded one very famous, and one forgotten piece by Antonín Dvorak. The well-known piece is the Serenade for Strings in E major, written by Dvorak in 1875. It is believed that Dvorak took up this small orchestral genre because it was less demanding than the symphony, but allowed for the provision of pleasure and entertainment. The other piece is the Cello Concerto in A major. Unlike its brother, the B minor Concerto Op.104, this concerto has been more than overlooked. It was left un-orchestrated by Dvorak, existing only in piano-score form. It was only after his death that a few composers orchestrated this dazzling piece of music. Cello virtuoso Alexander Rudin, and Musica Viva let us taste from this magnificent forgotten treasure…

This was the first commercially produced SACD hybrid super audio on the market. In June of 2000, I sat in one room recording in pcm and the research team of Philips were in the room next door taking my analogue signal directly from my mixer. I first released my pcm version in the fall of 2000. The Pyramix at that time was very primitive but thanks to the Phliips team who worked around the clock to produce the software, we were able to get this DSD version out at the beginning of 2001.

It is well known that Felix Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny was a highly talented musician, but fewer are familiar with the fact that there were two other musical siblings in the Mendelssohn family: Rebecka, a gifted singer, and Paul, a very competent amateur cellist. It is to Paul, a banker by profession, that we owe the existence of much of Felix’s music for the instrument, which in spite of Beethoven’s endeavours hadn’t yet become firmly established as a duo partner of the piano. Fitting comfortably on a single release, Mendelssohn’s works for cello and piano are here presented by Christian Poltera and Ronald Brautigam, who open with the Variations concertantes in D major, composed in 1829. Brautigam has recently released the composer’s Lieder ohne Worte, performing them on a copy of a piano by Pleyel from 1830, and plays the same instrument on the present disc. Meanwhile, Poltera has chosen to equip his 1711 Stradivarius cello with gut strings, and together the two musicians and their instruments create a sound which is both flexible, transparent and vigorous – ideal for Mendelssohn’s scores.

Most of Sara Sant'Ambrogio's recordings have been as cellist with the Eroica Trio, but she takes on the odd numbers of J.S. Bach's Six Suites for unaccompanied cello in this 2009 solo outing, and it's an ambitious undertaking. This album faces comparisons with several great recordings of the suites, and this young cellist likewise faces scrutiny for playing works associated with such names as Casals, Fournier, and Rostropovich, past masters of the instrument.

Cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio says ''Before I knew language, I knew Bach'' referring to her earliest memories of growing up in a house full of classical music. A founding member of the Eroica Trio, with recordings on Angel/EMI Classics, Sant'Ambrogio has been profiled in Strings, Strad, Gramophone, and more. She performs on a Matteo Goffriller cello, Venice, ca. 1715. Sara earned rave reviews for her earlier Bach CD (Cello Suites, 1, 3, & 5), and these recordings are even better.

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.

Heard here in a composer-conducted disc-mate to the première recording of Hovhaness’s early Cello Concerto (1936), City of Light (1970) has some lovely ideas, like the surprisingly sweet and simple string melody in the middle of the ‘Angel of Light’ movement (beginning at 1'30"), and the third movement, Allegretto grazioso, which sounds like a minuet in oriental garb. The outer movements, however, outstay their welcome.

Cellist Jacqueline du Pré needs little introduction to most listeners. Whether as a result of being perhaps the most prominent female cellist in the last century, her meteoric rise to fame at a young age, the equally rapid decline of her career at the hands of multiple sclerosis, or simply the incredible passion with which she performed, du Pré possessed a singular capacity to make an impression on her audiences. She was single-handedly responsible for reviving the long-dormant Elgar concerto that was to become one of her trademark pieces.

Allar Kaasik has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, in his native Estonia as well as abroad. Reflecting on it in the liner notes to this very personal disc, he singles out one particular aspect: the ambition to embrace the very latest compositions by Estonian composers. Performing in churches as he often does, Kaasik finds music resounding in a church a part of the Holy Service. This is reflected in many of the works which have been written for him, with composers such as Galina Grigorjeva and Kuldar Sink enriching the tradition of Estonian church music. Among Allar Kaasik’s many partners in performing these works, several appear on the present disc, including two eminent choirs – the State Choir Latvija and Estonian National Male Choir – as well as the Latvian organist Kristīne Adamaite. A focal point of the programme is the cello concerto Pro et contra by the most celebrated of all Estonian composers, Arvo Pärt. Kaasik is supported by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peeter Lilje and the recording has a particular significance – originally released by Melodiya in 1989, it was the first recording of Pärt’s music published on disc in the Soviet Union following the lifting of the unofficial ban on his music. The remaining works on Timeless Light were all recorded between 2014 and 2016.

It's curious why there are not more compositions for cello and guitar duo. The two overlap greatly in range, have wonderfully complementary timbres, and possess virtually none of the inherent balance problems encountered when pairing the cello with the more commonplace piano. The guitar is often thought of in term of Spanish or Latin-influenced music, and though there have been many compositions written for the cello by composers from these parts of the world, precious few have bothered to incorporate the guitar as a duo partner.