The Watkins brothers' third volume of British cello sonatas focuses on works written between 1945 and 1948. Edmund Rubbra's sole cello sonata opens in a sombre, stately, flowing manner. The style has one foot in the past and the other in the 20th century. Organic progression is paramount, and Paul Watkins projects the lines in long-breathed phrases. Alan Rawsthorne's 1948 sonata is darker, more nervy, more dissonant, more perturbed. EJ Moeran, whose sonata was premiered by his cellist wife Peers Coetmore with Charles Lynch in Dublin in 1947, believed the work to be a masterpiece, averring "I can't think how I ever managed to write it". In fact, it's not as fine-grained in either its agitation or lyricism as the other works, although the players do it proud. url.ie/f1f2