Prokofiev’s C major Sonata for violoncello and Sinfonia Concertante, like the three Britten Suites, Lutoslawski’s Concerto and that of Cristóbal Halffter were, along with many other twentieth century cello masterpieces, the upshot of their composers’ fascination with the personality of Mstislav Rostropovich. In December 1947, the aged Prokofiev, impressed by the performance he had just heard of his Concerto Op. 58, promised the twenty-year-old Rostropovich a cello and piano sonata. This was the beginning of a very intense creative relation, with “Slava” frequently visiting the Prokofievs’ dacha, and it was here, in the words of Claude Samuel, that the “composer’s testament was forged”, focused on the cello and whose key scores are this Sonata and the Sinfonia Concertante. Grotesque contrasts, present almost throughout Prokofiev, gather here to become mere complementary realities. For example, in the first theme of the Sonata, the cello design - which begins by recalling Beethoven’s “Muss es sein?” - develops in a placid C major, except for an ephemeral abyss in F flat major (eight flats down!) opening up under our feet for just a few tenths of a second. With those glimpses from the other corner of the Universe, the Sonata multiplies its expressive dimensions without having to abandon classical restraint. It might be said that, after so many years of struggle, Prokofiev ends up encountering refinement.

In terms of dates, the life of Gaspar Cassadó falls entirely within the twentieth century, but his artistic figure appears to us today as that of the last nineteenth century virtuoso, legendary and somewhat exotic, rather than as a twentieth century star, universal and a seller of discs. Cassadó, a pupil of Casals (at first favourite son, later rejected for political reasons), he participated with his maestro in the task of dignifying the violoncello. Cassadó is a virtuoso in the old sense of the word, but also a cultivated musician, open to the reality of the century and above all brushed with a modern elegance, a restraint of adornment we miss in Sarasate or in Kreisler. The interpretative aspect of this elegance survives in his recordings while we find the creative facet in his compositions, not so much in the grand structural endeavours (the “Rapsodia Catalana” or the Concerto for violoncello and orchestra) as in his chamber works for cello.

Composed in Rome in 1925, the “Sonata en estilo antiguo español” reflects its title and so, albeit along another path, that of nostalgia, approaches the practice at that time of the youthful Ernesto and Rodolfo Halffter, Adolfo Salazar and their generational colleagues. “Requiebros” are the blandishments of love, compliments, exaggerations of the beloved or, more plainly, of an admirer. Cassadó’s, dating from 1931, are inspired plaudits, filled with grace, fulfilling their seductive function and easily conquering those who engage. This is a brief score, hardly five minutes long, in which the cello sings surprisingly naturally and where the treatment of the Spanishness of the themes is impeccable. His cello and piano transcription of the “Intermezzo” from “Goyescas” is played often and with good reason, because Cassadó effectively channels the highly-inspired music of Granados toward the instrument.

Anton Webern is known for having given a cosmic dimension to Arnold Schönberg’s dodecaphonism. “Microcosmic”, might be the better word, like that of Max Planck or of Werner Heissenberg, because in Webern’s “cosmophony” all is extremely small (and extremely important!). This is the case with the Three pieces  Op. 11 from 1914, totalling less than three minutes, but which contain almost everything we know as “music”. If Schönberg forewent only tonality, Webern also renounced nearly everything else, in exchange for which he obtained an essential music in which each note, each chord, each silence, is an overwhelmingly rich universe. Hiscatalogue is just as essentialas his compositions, lasting in all less than a medium-sized opera. Until quite recently, the three minutes of the Opus 11 were all we had of Webern in the realm of music for cello and piano. Then, among the manuscripts which came to light in 1965, a movement appeared from a Sonata dated 1914 along with two pieces from 1899 which are the earliest that has come down to us from Webern. They must be heard as such, as testimony of the sounds going through the head of the fifteen year old who, shortly thereafter, would change the course of the history of music