A classic story

What led to the creation of the label Cello Classics?
A number of different things all coming together at the same time. At the bottom of it all is my interest in finding repertoire that hasn’t been played before, which I imagine is common to nearly every cellist. In particular, for many years now, I have been trying to work out where the origins of the 19th century sonata actually lie: we are led to believe that the cello and piano sonata began with Beethoven, as if he suddenly decided to compose the Opus 5.
There have to have been other previous examples. In the course of my research I frequently talked to Keith Harvey and discovered that he had similar interests. His own music library is vast, but needed cataloguing at the time, and it was while carrying out this task over many months that I discovered many treasures, including some Boccherini Sonatas unknown elsewhere in the music world. Keith generously suggested that I should record them, which set me to thinking about how best to go about it. I mentioned the idea to an old friend Nicholas Soames, who with his sister had formed a specialist label called Clarinet Classics some fifteen or so years ago.

Is that Victoria Soames?
Yes, the clarinettist and also the motivator behind Clarinet Classics. We decided to create our own label, model it exactly on the same lines, and call it Cello Classics. I talked further with Keith Harvey, who came up with some wonderful ideas for other releases, as I certainly had no intention of starting a label featuring only myself. Initially we launched with three CD’s – the Boccherini Sonatas, Leonid Gorokhov’s “Virtuoso Cello Transcriptions”, and Feuermann’s “Rare Recordings 1934 to 1942”, all of which included works never before appearing on CD.

How do you go about selecting recording material?
We have an artistic board which makes decisions based upon keeping a balance between commercial viability and our aim of introducing lesser-known material to the public: making sure, for example, that the label is not going too far down the historical route, or that there are not too many unknown cellists. One has to keep a balance between what’s interesting and what will actually sell.

Are you aware of gaps in the recorded material for the cello and are you attempting to fill them?
As I said there is much that hasn’t been recorded – but one has to be careful as very often the gaps are there for a good reason. For instance, I receive two or three wonderfully imaginative ideas from people each week, in which probably only twenty cellists around the world would be interested! At present there are several projects at the planning stage which involve sonatas or concertos that have never been recorded, some of which are recent discoveries. This is an exciting direction to take and is the raison d’etre for Cello Classics.

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