Consone Quartet - Beethoven and Schumann Cello Quintets (2025) Hi-Res

This collaboration between cellist Kate Bennett Wadsworth and the Consone Quartet grew out of Kate’s practice-led research project on the relationship between the Schumann Cello Concerto and the cellists of his time, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and culminating in a new critical edition for Bärenreiter. Kate’s arrangement of the Cello Concerto for cello and string quartet, based on a suggestion found in Schumann’s correspondence, is paired here with a cello quintet arrangement of Beethoven’s first cello sonata, made by Beethoven’s pupil and close confidant, Ferdinand Ries. Recorded here for the first time, in the beautiful acoustic of the Menuhin Hall, the two reworkings bring two very different visions of virtuosity into the same genial social space.