Inernational Record Review (UK) July/August 2008 

Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano and Cello. Antonio Meneses (cello); Menahem Pressler (piano). AVIE AV2103
Beethoven: Complete Sonatas and Variations for cello and piano. Suren Bagratuni (cello); Ralph Votapek (piano). Blue Griffin Recording BGR171
Heard in concert, each of these traversals would prove thoroughly satisfying, but  judged against one another, that of Suren Bagratuni and Ralph Votapek seems superior. For one thing there is the question of sound, not merely in terms of engineering but also in the tonal quality of the performers. In the Avie set, Antonio Meneses seems comparatively distant. One is tempted to simply attribute this to microphone placement, but I suspect it goes beyond that. Compared to Bagratuni, he seems reticent and almost deferential to his partner. Passages occur where the pianist has material that is essentially decorative and complementary to the leading melodic line for cello. Yet in some of these passages, Meneses, in effect, lets Menahem Pressler take centre stage. Meneses also favours an occasional legato phrasing that runs contrary to the music’s sense. It is almost as if he felt the 83-year-old Pressler was entitled to the spotlight.
None of this, to be sure, is seriously damaging to this Avie set, but heard in the context of the more stylish Bagratuni/Votapek partnership, such shortcomings, in many respects minor, stand out. With Bagratuni and Votapek everything seems balanced, each instrument on an equal footing, each performer responding to his partner; and Bagratuni is a far more aggressive cellist. He dives into his role with a colour and vibrancy that Meneses does not approach. Aside from the characteristic ‘buzz’ that one hears from his instrument, he attacks his part with greater thrust and intensity. Indeed, he may well be a major factor in lending the music a more incisive bite than Meneses and Pressler produce.
This is not merely a question of pacing. To be sure, Bagratuni and Votapek are often marginally faster than their counterparts, and occasionally, as in the first movement of Op. 69, markedly so. Yet their sharper attacks and sometimes cleaner execution, especially from the cello, help to lend the playing a greater vitality. In the two early sonatas both performances work well, but with Bagratuni and Votapek, one gets a slightly greater sense of the young lion of a composer flexing his muscles and flashing his prowess. The distinction is even greater with the quintessentially ‘middle period’ Op. 69. Surprisingly, these distinctions are less apparent in the two borderline ‘late period’ Op.102 sonatas. In fact, the major distinction here between the two approaches involves those already cited where tempo is not the main issue. Still the edge belongs to Votapek.
       So, too, with the three ‘early period’ variations. Because Beethoven was such a towering giant in so many genres, we may sometimes forget that right from the start he was a master of this particular one, perhaps its consummate master. Each of these three works is a miniature gem — imaginative, dramatic, and concise , the set based on the glorious Handel chorus, ‘The Conqu’ring Hero Comes’, being the most impressive of three. Again Bagratuni and Votapek score over their counterparts, mainly because they produce —in all three works—greater contrast from one variation to another. In both recordings of the sonatas, all exposition repeats are observed.
If I were owning but one set of these works, my choice would be the fairly recent edition of Schiff and Perényi. It also has the (admittedly minor) virtue of including Beethoven¹s arrangement for cello and piano of his Op. 17 Horn Sonata. But these new releases may prove, for various reasons, attractive to those who collect multiple versions. Certainly there is something to be learned about performance practices from each of them.           Mortimer H. Frank