Robin Stevens: Music for cello and piano (Sonata Romantica, Three Character Pieces, A Birthday Trifle, On the Wild Side, Balmoral Suite, Three Epigrams, Say Yes to Life)

The British composer Robin Stevens (b. 1958) is a great talent who is being discovered by the global music community, due in part to the critical acclaim given to the two previous Divine Art albums of his music. His varied, stimulating and expressive work arises from many influences – from the music of the Romantic era, to mathematics, his faith and inspiration of his teachers, and he is now producing substantial works for varied instrumental groupings, which are modernist and original, but yet immediately accessible.

An accomplished cellist himself, Stevens has produced a body of work for the instrument which should become part of the regular repertoire. On this album, works for cello and piano stand alongside pieces for solo cello, from the substantial 27–minute Sonata Romantica to several compositions in a lighter, tonal style full of Stevens’ wit and humour. Written between 1994 and 2020, they present a diverse range of expressionist and gently modernist sound worlds