SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Yuja Wang joins her friend and regular collaborator Gautier Capuçon to present a new recording of Rachmaninoff’s monumental Sonata for Piano and Cello. Cast in four movements, the Sonata makes equally high demands on both players and is filled with the turbulent emotions and striking expressive contrasts typical of Russian Romanticism.

The work was written for and dedicated to virtuoso cellist Anatoliy Brandukov, who gave its first performance in Moscow in December 1901 with the composer at the keyboard. Because of the work’s symphonic scope and the prominence and difficulty of its piano part, Rachmaninoff was reluctant to call it a cello sonata and it was published in 1902 under the title “Sonata for Piano and Cello in G Minor”.