Cooke Arnold: Three String Sonatas

When Arnold Cooke died in 2005 at the age of ninety-eight, he was the last survivor of a great generation of British composers that included Michael Tippett, Alan Rawsthorne and Constant Lambert. A distinguished student of Paul Hindemith in Berlin, he slowly established a national reputation in the 1930s, writing a series of significant symphonies and other orchestral works. His chamber music, however, is no less important, and the three string sonatas on this recording reveal his approachable, idiomatic, and technically eloquent writing for all three instruments. This release features some of Britain’s leading chamber players, including eminent cellist Raphael Wallfisch.