Laura van der Heijden is a British cellist with partly Dutch ancestry. Her debut album released in 2018 called 1948 was good for an Edison Klassiek. Her latest album features three mature cello sonatas in addition to a number of small pieces. Somehow it all has to do with the night and the moon, at least associatively. The large sonatas thereby symbolize man rising above himself. The smaller pieces
… are partly sentimental songs. Debussy initially titled his Cello Sonata (1915) as: Pierrot, Angry at the Moon. Such titles should never be taken literally; neither did Debussy himself. Regardless, the image of Pierrot and the moon fits nicely with the nimble nature of the music. The cello and piano are so complementary at times that the overall sound has something of a fantasy guitar. But what on earth does Britten's Cello Sonata have to do with the moon? Well, Britten composed it two years after an unmanned spacecraft became the first to reach the moon in 1959. You just have to think of it. A unique work is the Cello Sonata (1957, published in 1972) by George Walker, the American composer who has recently been attracting more and more attention. This is probably the first CD recording, although the piece was also released on vinyl in 1979. (HJ)more
