These are wonderful performances, beautifully and naturally recorded, showcasing an artist with beguilingly beautiful tone and rock solid technique and intonation. Beethoven’s cello sonatas punctuate his oeuvre and the two early sonatas were trailblazers (Mozart ignored the cello as a solo instrument: even his string quintets featured a second viola) and it was not until the “middle” period A Major work that the structure seems confident. Oddly, that said, even the second last sonata, composed on the cusp of the middle-to-late period, has a slow movement lasting just over three minutes and it’s only in the final sonata that we find a full blown Adagio. Among many features that impressed me here were the mysterious depths plumbed in the sometimes awkward-sounding opening Adagios of the two early works, (especially the darker G Minor), which can seem like mere introductions in the wrong hands. Other structural tripwires successfully negotiated include the way Capuçon and Braley make a seamless transition to the ensuing Allegros after the opening Adagios and their ability to contrast the consecutive fast movements of the first two sonatas. The rapport between cellist and pianist is impressive throughout, with especially brilliant and spontaneous interplay in the Op. 69, whose…