Beethoven with a French twist

Let's face it, Beethoven's five cello sonatas are simply not well enough known. Although they are cherished by players of that instrument, these works are too often relegated to poor sibling status alongside the composer's nine symphonies, 16 string quartets and 32 piano sonatas.

Writing for cello and piano is a challenge, and Beethoven was the first major composer to come up with sonatas for this testing combination.

In less than sensitive hands, the stringed instrument can be doggedly gruff in its lower register, thin and reedy in the upper. Too often, in concert and on CD, it can be vanquished by the superior firing power of the piano.

Anne Gastinel and Francois-Frederic Guy have the balance just right in their new recording of three of the sonatas, now available on one of the classiest European labels, Naive Classique, distributed in this country by Elite Imports. With a cover featuring the young musicians looking as they've been caught on the set of an elegant, bittersweet movie by Eric Rohmer, this is Beethoven with a French twist.

Enthusiasts for these works may be familiar with the complete recordings of either Rostropovich and Richter or Harrell and Ashkenazy. Both sets have remained unrivalled for decades. Yet Gastinel, playing on a Testore instrument of 1690, offers the perfect palate-freshener for those who might find Rostropovich's Slavic passion a little too zesty.

In the final count it's a sense of Gallic discretion that distinguishes Gastinel's and Guy's performances, caught in all their feathery detail by the French engineers in Lyon's Varese Hall. The Andante of the C major Sonata Op 102 No 1, with its deceptively simple, open textures, hints at a Poulenc around the corner rather than a Brahms at the door. And their duetting in the Adagio of the early G minor sonata is heavenly - all achieved without the snorts, grunts and heavy breathing that many listeners find intensely irritating in such recordings.

My only reservation? The suspense of wondering whether Gastinel and Guy will offer us a second CD before too long, so I can hear what they make of the composer's mighty A major Sonata of Op 69.

* Anne Gastinel & Francois-Frederic Guy, Beethoven Cello and Piano Sonatas nos 2, 4, 5. (Naive Classique V 4927)