Rachmaninov: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19 (Live from Verbier Festival / 2008)

Music festivals often create intriguing, one-off musical partnerships, and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival takes the palm for some of the most inspired matchmaking. In this live 2008 performance, veteran cellist Lynn Harrell, who died in April 2020, is joined by the human dynamo that is Yuja Wang, 43 years his junior. And sparks certainly fly. They approach Rachmaninov’s only cello sonata—his finest chamber work—in the spirit in which it was intended, as a dialogue between two equals. Both musicians are wonderfully attuned to the sonata’s complex mood and play with terrific intensity, no doubt aided by the concert setting.