Cello Sonata in A major, Op.69

A conspicuous peculiarity of Beethoven’s series of cello sonatas – a genre he virtually invented – is that he did not include a full-scale slow movement in any of them until he came to write the last of the five in 1815. Even so, in the Sonata in A major that he wrote for the amateur cellist Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein in 1808 most of the cello virtues are prominently displayed, beginning with its nobility of utterance in the unaccompanied opening bars. There are characteristic displays of physical energy, too, above all in the Scherzo, and in the slow introduction to the last movement Beethoven briefly draws on the expressive potential of the A-string before launching into an Allegro vivace that so brilliantly combines poetry with physical exhilaration.

A conspicuous peculiarity of Beethoven’s series of cello sonatas - a genre he virtually invented - is that he did not include a full-scale slow movement in any of them until he came to write the last of the five (in D major Op.102, No.2) in 1815. It could be that in his day there were few cellists who could be trusted to make “an ox sing like a nightingale” as Voltaire so vividly put it. Even so, in the Sonata in A major that Beethoven wrote for the amateur cellist Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein in 1808 most of the cello virtues are prominently displayed, beginning with its nobility of utterance in the unaccompanied opening bars. There are characteristic displays of physical energy, too, above all in the Scherzo - though never anything remotely ox-like - and in the slow introduction to the last movement Beethoven briefly draws on the expressive potential of the A-string before launching into an Allegro vivace that so brilliantly combines poetry with physical exhilaration.

Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, though a keen amateur cellist, was “not,” according to Beethoven, “a connoisseur of music.” He was, on the other hand, “a friend of all that is beautiful and good” and, it might be added, an astute business manager – as he demonstrated by securing the composer not only a favourable contract with with the London publisher Muzio Clementi but also a potentially lucrative annuity from the Archduke Rudolph and the Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky. So he deserved the dedication of the Sonata in A major, the most generously endowed score for cello and piano written up to that time.

The first movement is based on no fewer than four main themes – the expansive melody in A major heard on unaccompanied cello in the opening bars, a contrastingly aggressive counterpart to it introduced by piano in A minor, a tenderly lyrical second-subject idea shared by the two instruments in E major and its more forceful counterpart on piano accompanied by pizzicato cello. The cello also slips in a brief but enchanting closing theme before the end of the exposition. While there is room for only a small proportion of this material in the development, the closing theme makes another ethereal appearance at the beginning of an extended coda.

After the Allegro molto, a vigorous and wittily syncopated scherzo in A minor with more melodious but still agitated episodes in the major, it is time, surely, for an extended slow movement. But, in fact, Beethoven was to deny the cello a full-scale Adagio until the last of his five cello sonatas. The promisingly expressive Adagio cantabile turns out to be no more than an introduction to the closing Allegro vivace which, though an exuberant movement to be taken at a rather quicker tempo than the Allegro ma non tanto, contrives to reflect in its main theme something of the character of the melody introduced by unaccompanied cello at the beginning of the work.

Beethoven dedicated his Cello Sonata in A major to Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, an amateur cellist, court secretary in Vienna and a good friend of the composer. According to Beethoven, Gleichenstein was ‘no connoisseur of music” though he was “a friend of all that is beautiful and good.” To judge by the quality of the writing in his sonata, he must also have been a more than competent cellist and, if no intellectual, a musician of true instinct and intelligence. The exposed unaccompanied first entry of the cello is almost as severe a test of nerve and imagination as the first entry of the soloist in the Fourth Piano Concerto in G major, written three years earlier in 1805.

After calling so subtly on the poetic quality of the cello, Beethoven immediately exploits the physical strength in a companion theme in A minor. It is a contrast characteristic of the work. He does the same in the second subject, with the lyrical theme introduced in a major by the piano and then offset by its more foreceful companion in the same key. But, as the closing theme of the exposition suggests, the cello’s own tastes are on the poetic side. This the development confirm. The cellist is able to turn away the wrath of the piano by humouring it at first and offering a soft word in C sharp minor and eventually inspiring it to add a chromatic counterpoint to the reappearance of the first theme at the beginning of the recapitulation. A similar conflict, on the same thematic fragment, arises in the coda, with similar results.

The A minor Scherzo, on the other hand, is predominantly an expression of physical energy, all the more impressive for its frustration by quiet dynamics, syncopated rhythms and fragmented lines. There is a contrasting episode in A major but even here the piano makes no secret of its restlessness and the cello’s melodic phrases are only short. On the other hand, the balance is quickly restored by the few bars of E major Andante cantabile which form the introduction to the last movement. The balance is sustained in the Allegro vivace by means of themes which combined the two element in themselves. The first subject is one of Beethoven’s greatest inspirations – a shapely song melody and, at the sam time, a source of physical exhilaration. The second subject combines the two elements in a different way, with the vocal appeals of the cello quietly but impatiently answered by the piano. The momentum is carried through the exposition and dramatically increased in the short development section Perhaps because there has been no opportunity to enlarge on the song aspect of the first subject Beethoven add a comparatively long coda where, although there is still no room of expansion, he simultaneously makes the best of both sides of his melodic inspiration.