Arpeggione

With this collection of works for cello and piano, Gautier Capu§on and Frank Braley pay tribute to two towering musicians of the 20th century: Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten, whose famous collaboration resulted in the historic recording of all four works on the album.

Schubert wrote the 'Arpeggione' Sonata in 1824, when he was already desperately ill and suffering from crushing bouts of depression. "It is a work that has always profoundly touched and moved me," says Capu§on, "There is such greatness of feeling in it, even though Schubert was in the depths of despair. Debussy's Cello Sonata was also written at a dark time, in 1915, the second year of the First World War, when the composer was already ill with the cancer that was to kill him in 1918; yet it is a work of both sober elegance and mercurial fantasy."