Pieter Wispelwey, Lois Shapiro - Beethoven: Variations For Violoncello And Pianoforte (1994)

There are only 45 minutes of it, but this recital teems with fresh insights in the irresistible serendipity of its playing. Lois Shapiro partners Wispelwey's 1701 cello on a 1780 Viennese fortepiano whose wiry energies she unleashes in an attention-grabbing opening theme for Handel's See the conqu'ring hero comes. Her brighteyed first variation glints as phrases dart from dynamic shadow to light and back again. Then the cello's lean, slightly astringent voice makes itself felt in no uncertain terms before the keyboard gets its own back in mercurial scale passages.
The players' delight in teasing, sparring and debating with each other comes into its own in the variations on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen.
The theme itself struts forward cheekily, only to peck its way through the first variation, before the cello makes the most of the wry harmonic subtext of the second. In the seventh, one half of a shared phrase caresses and preens the other; the 10th casts the shadow of Papageno's noose.
Each player's imagination and technique is tested to the full in an absorbing account of the more abstracted Bei Männern variations. The world of Singspiel isn't far away, either, in this performance of the Sonata, Op 17: Wispelwey and Shapiro summon up the nascent world of Marzelline and Jacquino in their quick, ardent responses to the music and to each other.