Well over a century old but looking like it was drawn yesterday, William T Horton’s The Path to the Moon is a monochrome image of a ridge winding through space, with vertiginous drops on either side. It’s the inspiration for a programme by the cellist Laura van der Heijden and pianist Jâms Coleman that has its own potent atmosphere, on one hand evoking risk and striving and on the other, the beguilement of moonlight. The result is an intriguing juxtaposition of three major 20th-century sonatas with a handful of songs in which the cello takes the vocal line.
The work they are keenest to champion is the 1957 Cello Sonata by groundbreaking Black American composer George Walker, a tautly argued piece that’s a real discovery, persuasively played here. There’s also a performance of Britten’s Sonata that vividly captures its sense of dialogue and a many-coloured one of the 1915 Sonata by Debussy. The songs, taking in Korngold, Price, Boulanger and Fauré, include a gorgeous version of Debussy’s Beau Soir; none fits the Horton image quite so perfectly as the Sonetto XXX from Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo. The straightforward cello-for-voice substitution doesn’t do every song justice, though: Everyone’s Gone to the Moon loses something without the “church full of singing, out of tune” lyrics and the heady weirdness brought to it by Nina Simone.
