For this week’s opening track, cellist Seth Parker Woods and pianist Andrew Rosenblum team up for the soulful “Andante” from Rachmaninoff’s 1901 Cello Sonata. Its soaring music is in the vein of the beautiful slow movement from the famous Second Piano Concerto—no surprise given that just one year separates their completion. Rachmaninoff composed the Sonata for his close friend Anatoliy Brandukov, and crafts a true partnership between piano and cello, with each part as important as the other. Successful performances require a deep understanding between players, says Woods. “The iconic ‘Andante’ has always felt like a dance between friends or lovers—or that’s how I’ve always imagined it,” he tells Apple Music Classical. “There’s a push and pull in the conversation, and Rachmaninoff does an amazing job to balance the foreground and background of the instrumental lines. “Andrew is, I consider, one of the best collaborative artists performing today,” continues Woods. “For many years we concertised as a duo, and the Rachmaninoff was a seminal work for us. We’d both studied and performed this work prior to meeting each other, so a lot of the groundwork had been done, but as is always the case, we needed to find our collective interpretation and not just a mashup of individual experiences.” The Works features the best of the very latest classical releases. We regularly update this playlist, so if you find a piece of music or a performance you particularly love, don’t forget to add it to your library.