Catalogue

Summary:

“In Alexander Panfilov, cellist Christoph Croisé has a pianist who can match him for soulful, scrupulous introspection but who also guides the big outbursts and then turn to a darker cast of thought. They’re in perfect balance…The Rachmaninov is more of a curate’s egg…Sound is full and vivid, though the pianist briefly overpowers the cellist in Rachmaninov’s second movement… The high jinks offered [in the shorter tracks] are delicious.” ★★★★ BBC Music Magazine

In the spring of 2019, Christoph Croisé scored a break-through with his critically acclaimed recording of Haydn’s Cello Concertos (AV 2402). With The Russian Album, he turns his attention to two towering 20th-century masterpieces, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s early, eloquent and emotional Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s D minor Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 40. The latter work’s finale featured what would become the composer’s signature style of caricature and irony that proved too provocative to the Stalinist regime. Croisé also offers two “encores” – his own transcriptions of the March from Sergei Prokofieff’s propulsive opera The Love for Three Oranges, and Rodion Shchedrin’s flambouyant In the Style of Albéniz – and a bonus track by his compatriot, the Swiss cellist and composer Thomas Demenga, New York Honk, a humorous homage to the Big Apple’s cacophonous traffic noises.

Tracklist:

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19
1. I. Lento – Allegro moderato (14.16)
2. II. Allegro scherzando (6.32)
3. III. Andante (6.20)
4. IV. Allegro mosso (10.59)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40
5. I. Allegro non troppo (12.06)
6. II. Allegro (3.13)
7. III. Largo (7.39)
8. IV. Allegro (4.16)

RODION SHCHEDRIN (b. 1932), transcr. Christoph Croisé
9. In the Style of Albéniz (4.12)

SERGEI PROKOFIEFF (1891–1953) transcr. Christoph Croisé
10. March (from The Love for Three Oranges) (1.37)

BONUS TRACK

THOMAS DEMENGA (b. 1954)
11. New York Honk (2.07)

Christoph Croisé, cello
Alexander Panfilov, piano

Total duration: 73.33

Recorded 23 – 25 October 2017, Radiostudio Zürich, Switzerland
Tonmeister: Joël Cormier
Recorded in cooperation with SRF zwei