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Acclaimed Dutch cellist Viola de Hoog presents Mendelssohn’s two great cello sonatas. With a lifetime spent performing chamber repertoire on period instruments, de Hoog is an ideal, passionate exponent for this music, bringing performances that encapsulate the composer’s sense of refined virtuosity. Effervescent in their outer movements, lyrical and whimsical in their inner sections, Mendelssohn intended his cello sonatas to show complete parity between piano and cello. De Hoog is partnered by the astonishing Armenian pianist Mikayel Balyan, who plays an 1847 piano made by Mendelssohn’s favourite maker, Érard. The combination of this fine instrument with Balyan’s sensitive musicianship brings a rainbow of sonorities and colours. Mendelssohn’s virtuosic piano writing has rarely been heard with such clarity on an original instrument: cascades of notes fly from Balyan’s nimble fingers. The release also includes the first recording on period instruments of Mendelssohn’s own arrangement of his famous Trio in D minor, Op.49, re-scored for flute, cello and piano. Viola de Hoog and Mikayel Balyan are joined by eminent Dutch flautist Marten Root. One of the staples of nineteenth-century chamber music is heard in completely new colours.