To The Music (An Die Musik) is a new album from Lawo Classics with cellist Torleif Thedéen and pianist Marianna Shirinyan.

Exclusively Available in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and the recorded format and bit rate of Stereo DXD 32 Bit from NativeDSD. 

In Richard Strauss’s early Cello Sonata Op. 6, we hear flickers of his distinct musical personality sprouting amid cracks in a traditional Germanic facade. Not many works from Richard Strauss’s teenage years still get performed, but this one has become part of the repertoire. Piano and cello are woven tight here, in this case moving from the lyrical verve and heavy Brahmsian chords of the opening to a four-part fugue.

Mendelssohn’s easy lyricism can be heard in the Romance-like Larghetto while the same composer’s elfin lightness peers through Strauss’s final Allegro vivo. The idea of thematic unity and fluidity, already demonstrated by Schumann, is also present.

The genre of the Romance – lyrical with a touch of the sentimental was a favorite of Clara Schumann. So much of what Clara and her husband Robert wrote seems imbued with the idea of partnership; of one entity dependent on another.

Torleif Thedéen, Cello
Marianna Shirinyan, Piano