... while many cellists have turned Brahms’s lieder into ‘songs without words’, few have managed the transformation with such skill and thought. ... Bertrand and Amoyel give [‘Sapphische Ode’] a real vocal lilt, and while some may bristle at the cellist’s appropriation of a few notes of the piano part (between the first stanza’s second and third lines), the result makes musical sense to my ear. ... There’s more to the programme than just the title, too, for Bertrand and Amoyel connect the songs and the sonatas in unexpected ways. ... It’s rare to find interpretations that marry insight and naturalness, and that sends this recording to very near the top of an imposingly tall heap.  Andrew Farach-Colton