Jonathan Cooke Limited Records - JCLRecords

Riding high in the world cello rankings, Jamie Walton's new album links the familiar Brahms first sonata with an early work by Richard Strauss, and a very fine, but an almost unknown, score from the Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille. This is passionate warm-hearted playing with faultless intonation and technically immaculate. And the sound quality is exemplary. DD

By Yorkshire Post - November 2010

Classical Music Magazine - Recording of the Fortnight

The music of Ludwig Thuille is finally getting exposure and here the cello sonata is given a convincing showcase. Set beside a warmly lyrical performance of Brahms’ E minor sonata, the melodic intricacy and varied moods of Thuille’s work come to the fore. Taking a break from their Anglo-Russian explorations on the Signum [Label], this brilliant duo revel in the romanticism, conjuring up the fiery vigour of Strauss’ youthful essay and the gravitas of the other two works.

By Phillip Sommerich, 20th November 2010

A wonderfully exuberant Strauss Sonata opens this disc, the second of the British duo's Romantic sonata series. Daniel Grimwood writes in the booklet of the 'fiendish piano and awkward cello writing', but there's no hint of this in their performance. Jamie Walton's 1712 Guarneri soars expressively in the Andante, and the spirit of Till Eulenspiegel is already evident in the Allegro vivo, whose false starts and cheeky humour are aided by well-judged rubato.

Walton keeps a light touch for the C·string opening of Brahms's E minor Sonata, creating a pleasingly soft tone colour. His ability to make even a single note deeply expressive comes into its own in the more fragmented phrases, and. after a poised Menuetto, the trio with its sotto voce repeats has a yearning expressiveness. The finale's opening octaves fire out like bullet shots, with Walton's playing punchy and athletic.

The turbulent, concerto-like piano part of the sonata by Strauss's friend ludwig Thuille is passionately played by Grimwood.lt is Walton's focused. earthy cello sound that opens the work, however. and he enjoys some unashamedly heart-on-sleeve melodies in the Adagio. The restless Allegro with its chromatic touches and dotted rhythms makes a well-characterised finale.

By JANET BANKS - The Strad November 2010

Star CD

This most Germanic of romantic cello sonata collections is all about youth – or rather later youth, when early artistic experimentation gives way to something a little more controlled. All three sonatas here come from the formative stages of their composer’s careers, and – to keep the theme going – they are played by the youthful British pairing of cellist Jamie Walton and pianist Daniel Grimwood.

Richard Strauss wrote his Cello Sonata in F Op 6 at the age of 18. It’s a mix of Brahmsian conservatism – that he’d soon abandon – and high-flung heroic gestures, which would become his trademark. Walton captures the rapturous exuberance of the cello part from the opening chords to the leaping lines of it’s hunt-like finale, and the technically demanding piano part is played very convincingly by Grimwood.

Tricky piano parts are a staple of many romantic sonatas; they’re sometimes even more demanding than the solo part. With his Sonata in E minor Op 38, Brahms lets the pianist know that they’re a soloist in their own right. Grimwood tackles this part brilliantly, particularly the work’s closing fugue. Walton is no slouch either, and I love the way he accelerates into the climax of the opening movement. The disc closes with Ludwig Thuille’s Sonata in D minor Op 22. In his sleeve notes, Grimwood argues that Thuille deserves more recognition, and I agree – this is a fascinating work from the composer’s early output that contains plenty of harmonic inventiveness and intensity.

Though Walton and Grimwood have already tasted plentiful acclaim, it’s clear they still have lots to offer us.

By Simon Benger - MUSO Magazine Dec ‘10/Jan ‘11

There’s not a great deal one can say in favour of Richard Strauss’s early Cello Sonata. Formally a bit of a patchwork, it relies too heavily on rhetorical gestures rather than much of substance. You’re aware that a young composer is trying very hard to impress you, but that his ambition is running ahead of his actual attainments in the field of ‘abstract’ music. On the other hand you can forgive him a lot for his sheer panache: the work is really quite fun, some of the ideas, especially in the finale, are undeniably attractive – and a performance like this one is so good that it has you, for a moment, suspending disbelief. Jamie Walton and Daniel Grimwood launch into the impassioned braggadocio of the opening with such fervour and attack that the result is thrilling, even as you recognize that the whole passage is deliberately OTT. They do equally well with the climactic inflation in the finale, and ably prevent the weakly Mendelssohnian slow movement from falling too deeply into sentimentality.
This is certainly among the best available versions of this, if anything, over-recorded work, ranking with the ardent rhetoric and instrumental display of Johannes Moser and Paul Rivinius on Hänssler, which I find preferable to Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax on Sony, where the pianist is so prominently balanced that he almost drowns out Ma’s cello at the big moments.
Strauss’s sonata is a youthful indiscretion; the sonata of his close friend Ludwig Thuille, by contrast, is a mature work by a composer of more conservative instincts but impeccable technique. Composed in 1901-02, this is a far more impressive piece that either of Thuille’s early string quartets. Laid out on a grand scale – it’s the longest of the three sonatas here – it effortlessly sustains its length with music of a consistently high quality and interest. If Brahms is an important influence, Thuille’s orientation is very different: the first movement’s turbulent opening subject, with its massive piano writing, gives way to a lyric-heroic second subject of almost Rachmaninov-like grandeur and sweep. Whereas the youthful Thuille of the quartets thought almost entirely in terms of melody, this movement is motif-driven, with large sections generated from small melodic or rhythmic figures of a few notes each. The big, sombre Adagio slow movement is a noble conception, which allows the beauty of Walton’s tone to shine forth while testing his powers of sostenuto playing to the utmost. The muscular finale, by turns playful and sardonic, brings the work to a very satisfying conclusion. This is a sonata that deserves a place in the general cello-piano repertoire. There was an excellent ASV recording by Sophie Rolland and Marc-André Hamelin, no less (the piano part does indeed demand a virtuoso), but the only current available rival seems to be an excellent account by Marcy Rosen and Lydia Artymiw on Bridge, interestingly coupled with the Dohnányi Sonata and something even rarer than the Thuille: Tovey’s Sonata for two cellos.
In their different ways Thuille and Strauss (at any rate the teenage Strauss) were very much in thrall to Brahms, who makes a logical third to this intelligently planned programme. Walton and Grimwood turn in a first-rate performance of the E minor Sonata, playing up the lyricism rather than the gruffness in the first movement but rising to a magnificently climactic point of return in the recapitulation. There is a delightful give-and-take between the two players in the minuet-like second movement, while in the fugal finale they are like a single focused organism, firm of purpose in carrying the separate voices of the polyphony onward to an absolutely decisive conclusion. There are many competing versions equally good, of course – and Steven Isserlis with Stephen Hough are even better, as is Piatigorsky’s 1936 account with Rubinstein, Rostropovich’s with Rudolf Serkin, and Janos Starker’s with Rudolf Buchbinder. However, I would suggest that the Thuille Sonata is enough on its own to make this disc worth considering. Not only are the performances uniformly excellent but the perfection of the instrumental balance and the vividness of the recording are quite exceptional.

By International Record Review