Brahms, Reger, Schumann

“A talent to reckon with: poised, committed, graceful and spirited,” is how the Los Angeles Times has described the Russian-American cellist Nina Kotova. Her Warner Classics catalogue already includes an album of sonatas by Rachmaninov. It is now joined by a programme of German Romantic music which she recorded with the Brazilian-born pianist José Feghali, a laureate of the Van Cliburn Competition who died aged just 53 in 2014. Spanning 65 years of musical history, the recital comprises works by Schumann and Brahms, who were close friends, and by Max Reger. He drew inspiration for his Suite No. 2 for solo cello, composed in 1914, from Pablo Casals’s advocacy of Bach’s solo suites.