Christoph Croisé - The Solo Album (2021) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Modernism. Multiculturism. Multi-tuning. Lockdown. These are among the elements that bind the works on "The Solo Album" by cellist Christoph Croisé, who took the opportunity of 2020’s coronavirus isolation to work intensively on a variety of solo works and also turn his hand to composition.

At the heart of the album is Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály’s epic Sonata, the first major work for solo cello after the Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach which were written two centuries earlier. The virtuosity demands of the soloist re-tuning two of the cello’s strings, double-stop trills and simultaneous bowed and plucked passages, all of which Christoph dispatches with aplomb. Framing Kodály’s Sonata are works by two compatriots, György Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata which draws inspiration from Béla Bartók, and the more recent Stonehenge by cellist, composer and pop-music producer Péter Pejtsik which includes intimations of electric guitar.

A “sandwich filler” is Christophe’s first composition for solo cello, Spring Promenade, which is infused with boogie-woogie, reggae, swing and techno. He took inspiration from Sicilian composer-cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima whose Concerto Rotondo incorporates electronics and extended techniques. Closing out the album, Sollima’s short work Alone gives way to the album’s “encore”, the exuberant Some like to show it off by Croatian cellist-composer Thomas Buritch.

Tracklist:
1. Concerto Rotondo For Solo Cello: I. Lento con libertà (03:26)
2. Concerto Rotondo For Solo Cello: II. Allegro (04:06)
3. Concerto Rotondo For Solo Cello: III. Yafù (03:57)
4. Concerto Rotondo For Solo Cello: IV. Allegro (04:00)
5. Sonata For Solo Cello: I. Dialogo (03:58)
6. Sonata For Solo Cello: II. Capriccio (03:52)
7. Spring Promenade (04:12)
8. Stonehenge (04:26)
9. Sonata For Solo Cello, Op. 8: I. Allegro maestoso ma appassionato (08:07)
10. Sonata For Solo Cello, Op. 8: II. Adagio (con grand espressione) (10:55)
11. Sonata For Solo Cello, Op. 8: III. Allegro molto vivace (11:32)
12. Alone (05:03)
13. Some Like To Show It Off (03:46)


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