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Chamber Music 3 on CD

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.