On Friday, June 4, 2021, Orchid Classics will release DIALOGO, the debut album of cellist John-Henry Crawford, First Prize Winner of the IX International Carlos Prieto Cello Competition and the Classical Recording Foundation's 2019 Young Artist of the Year. Playing a rare 200-year-old cello smuggled out of Austria by his grandfather, Robert Popper, Crawford performs Brahms' Sonata for Piano and Cello No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99 and Shostakovich's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40 with pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion, as well as Ligeti's Sonata for Solo Cello, all recorded and engineered by GRAMMY Award-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse. Crawford writes in the notes, "This program explores several different modes of a concept that is vital to the fabric of our lives, our relationships, and even the progress of our society as a whole - dialogue. The opening movement of the Ligeti Sonata, titled Dialogo, is an ideal musical encapsulation of this theme and the inspiration behind the title of the album. A story of unrequited love, young Ligeti fell for a fellow student, Annuss Virány, who was a cellist. He wrote the first movement as a metaphorical love duet for her. As one voice begins in inquiry, another responds, until eventually they merge together, singing in tandem. Throughout the whole sonata, these characters question, reply, plead, and even shout at one another.