The clean, vivid, and simpatico teamwork cellist Anne Gastinel and pianist François-Frederic Guy bring to Beethoven is a joy to experience, not to mention their individual contributions (Guy’s solo Beethoven is a known quantity, exemplified in his exciting “Hammerklavier” sonata for Harmonia Mundi). In contrast to the splendidly worked-out refinement you hear from Miklós Perényi and András Schiff in the Op. 5 No. 2 sonata, Gastinel and Guy give the music’s giddy abandon its full due without sacrificing tonal control or lapsing into the vulgar touches that sometimes taint spontaneous intentions (Du Pré/Barenboim or Maisky/Argerich, for example).
Gastinel’s immaculate upper-register work particularly stands out in the A major sonata’s outer movements; also notable is her ability to deftly convey Beethoven’s abrupt shifts in dynamic, mood, and texture. Also notice the musicians’ uncannily matched trills and dovetailed scales throughout this work, or their lively give and take in the crisply dispatched variation sets. Naïve’s vibrant engineering and Jeremy Nichols’ perceptive booklet notes seal my enthusiastic recommendation. Bring on the next volume! [3/4/2005]
