About This Item
Sir Donald Tovey (1875-1940), long hailed as one of the finest writers on music in English, saw himself primarily as a composer. His occasionally turbulent friendship with Pau Casals was the spur for a monumental concerto and one of three sonatas for solo cello, two cellos and cello with piano. The cello was the ideal instrument for Tovey's Brahmsian musical language, with it's long, singing lines unfolding in effortless counterpoint - though the huge passacaglia that ends the solo sonata also demands a virtuoso technique. The brief Bach arrangement recorded here for the first time arose when the twelve-year-old Tovey added a cello line to one of Bach's best-known preludes, originally for lute.
