Classical home listening - Hope Amid Tears; Taliesin’s Songbook

The Guardian 0

Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax give us tender Beethoven cello sonatas to treasure, and Ty Cerdd brings together Welsh songs old and new

• Hope Amid Tears (Sony) is a wonderfully generous and probing recording of Beethoven’s cello sonatas and three sets of variations, by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax. This starry duo has made music together for decades (including these sonatas, which they recorded first time round in 1982 in a vigorous, but more straightforward manner). Their intimacy is always evident, in the balance and flow, in the equality of the musical partnership, in the willingness to take risks in Beethoven’s revolutionary silences and outbursts.

The title comes from the composer himself, who allegedly inscribed the best-known of the five sonatas - the exuberant No 3 in A Major, Op 69 - with the words “Inter lacrimas et luctum” (“amid tears and grief”). Recorded in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, last summer, these performances are exploratory, tender and conversational. Yo-Yo Ma brings boldness and individuality to every note, using slides between notes as needed; the attack vigorous, the lyricism poetic. Ax is the perfect partner, as heartfelt and eloquent as he is witty. A set to treasure.