Cello Sonata Op.6

Samuel Barber wrote his    Cello Sonata in 1932, before he graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Even so, though still a student at the time, he was already a published composer and it was only four years before he started on the String Quartet with the slow movement that was to become world-famous as the Adagio for Strings.

If those familiar with that phenomenally popular Adagio recognise something similar in the Cello Sonata it will probably not be in the first movement. While it has its tender moments, the Allegro ma non troppo is a fairly tough piece that relaxes its urgently expressive attitude only towards the end. Beginning on a crescendo in C minor, the cello climbing through two and half octaves in as many bars, it is a passionate inspiration with a main theme characterised by its upward striving sixths. That theme appears only twice in the exposition, on the cello in the opening bars and later on the piano just before a brief keyboard cadenza, but determines the aggressive character of much of the movement even so. The first lyrical episode is the melodious second subject introduced by the cello over repeated A minor harmonies on the piano. Strangely enough, although the main theme dominates the volatile development, when it returns at the beginning of the recapitulation it does so in disguise, only gradually revealing itself –    just before another short cadenza, this one for cello. The emotional turning point is the recall of the second subject, the melody on cello as before but now harmonised    in a congenial C major.

Where one might hear anticipations of the Adagio for Strings is in the (Adagio) outer sections of the second movement, which are based on shapely and contemplative cello melody in E flat major. In extreme contrast, the Presto middle section, is a brilliantly scored scherzo featuring an ingenious rhythmic relationship between the two instruments. The last movement begins, like the first, in C minor. In this case, however, in a drama motivated mainly the piano, which introduces all the main themes, there is to be no late reconciliation. The work ends uncompromisingly in C minor.