Beethoven: The Conquering Hero - Complete Works for Cello & Piano (2022)

This Avie release is an ambitious undertaking for cellist Jennifer Kloetzel, known mostly as the cellist for the now-disbanded Cypress String Quartet, and pianist Robert Koenig. There are numerous recordings of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano, but this one has attractive and distinctive features. For one, Kloetzel and Koenig cover not just the five sonatas but miscellaneous other Beethoven works, quite rarely heard, for the cello-and-piano combination. There are three sets of variations, one of which, the ... Read More

This Avie release is an ambitious undertaking for cellist Jennifer Kloetzel, known mostly as the cellist for the now-disbanded Cypress String Quartet, and pianist Robert Koenig. There are numerous recordings of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano, but this one has attractive and distinctive features. For one, Kloetzel and Koenig cover not just the five sonatas but miscellaneous other Beethoven works, quite rarely heard, for the cello-and-piano combination. There are three sets of variations, one of which, the Variations on "See the conqu'ring hero comes," WoO 45 (the tune is from Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, HWV 63), gives the album its rather odd name. There are two other variation sets on melodies from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, and a cello arrangement, apparently by Beethoven himself, of the Horn Sonata, Op. 17, the music of which arguably rests more naturally on the strings of the cello than on the horn. The main attraction, though, is Kloetzel's playing in the five sonatas.... Read Less