Cellist Zuill Bailey's 2010 recording of J S Bach's Suites for Solo Cello (TEL3197802) went straight to the top of the Billboard classical chart. His new Telarc album is devoted to the music of Brahms, and includes the Sonatas in E minor, Op.38 and F major, Op.99 alongside several rarely-recorded song transcriptions. Bailey’s musical partner here is his longtime friend, the pianist Awadagin Pratt.

Zuill Bailey made his Telarc debut with Russian Masterpieces for Cello early in 2009, a disc which featured music by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Towards the end of 2010 he joined forces with pianist Simone Dinnerstein in a critically acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Piano and Cello. Since then his recording of J S Bach’s cello suites has been a massive success, particularly in the USA where it spent four weeks in a row at No.1 on the Billboard classical chart, and even made the Top 30 in the New Artists chart.

Along with Brahms’ Cello Sonatas in E Minor and F Major, the album includes the composer’s “Sonatensatz”, the so-called “F-A-E Scherzo”, which comes from a collaborative violin sonata composed by Brahms, Robert Schumann and fellow composer Albert Dietrich. It is heard here transcribed for the cello from the violin original. Also featured on the disc are transcriptions for cello and piano of seven of his songs.