Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Cello album review – Watkins and Bax have a shared impulse to deliver eloquence

Paul Watkins/Alessio Bax

Signum Classics

Cellist Watkins’ career-long immersion in the composer pays dividends in his pairing with Alessio Bax’s unfussy virtuosity

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s cellist of the Nash Ensemble and the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins has immersed himself in almost all the chamber music Beethoven wrote. Now he brings those years of experience to his first recording of the cello sonatas. He approached the pianist Alessio Bax for this project after hearing him play the Moonlight Sonata, and his instinct was good: their playing here seems to come from a shared impulse, unflaggingly eloquent without ever seeming to strive for effect.