Miklós Perényi plays Benjamin Britten’s Third Suite op. 87 and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite VI D-Dur BWV 1012, making plain an historical interconnection. Britten wrote his cello suites for Rostropovich, inspired by hearing him playing the Bach suites. Rostropovich hailed all of Britten’s cello suites as masterpieces but singled out the third (written 1971) for special praise: “sheer genius”, in his words. Into the fabric of the thematic material Britten wove fragments of melodies from Russian folk songs, only allowing them to emerge fully in the final movement. On this disc, Bach’s last cello suite follows Britten’s, and Perényi’s Bach dances with elegance and energy. The album concludes with a return to Hungary, and Ligeti’s cello sonata of 1948-1953. Ligeti released the piece for publication only in 1979, so it figures in the chronology (as Paul Griffiths point out in the notes) both before and after the Britten. Meanwhile a significant piece in the contemporary repertoire, it’s a powerful, heartfelt work from a composer who had himself studied the cello. This disc is Perényi’s first ECM solo recital, and follows his brilliant performance, alongside András Schiff, in the 2001/2 recordings of the Complete Music for Piano and Violoncello by Beethoven.
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