Cello Sonata in C major Op.102 No.1 (1815)

Whatever the reason for Beethoven’s apparent reluctance to include a true slow movement in his cello sonatas, in this case at least it cannot have been because he didn’t trust the cellist to sustain a secure line. Both of the last two cello sonatas were written for one of the composer’s favourite instrumentalists at the time, Joseph Linke, to whom in Op.102 No.2 he finally conceded a full-scale Adagio.

The absence of a slow movement in Op.102 No.1 is attributable more to Beethoven’s radical attitude to structure. It is an extraordinary interlocking design consisting of two quick movements each preceded by a slow introduction, the central slow passage incorporating a thematic transformation which links the whole work together. The opening Andante is based on a Slavonic-sounding melody introduced in the first two bars by the cello. The imperious first subject of the A minor Allegro vivace has nothing thematically in common with the introduction. Nor does the second subject – apart, that is, from an espressivo phrase on the piano with the same intervals as the first four notes of the Slavonic melody. Scarcely noticeable at the time, that four-note phrase seems scarcely more significant when the cello plays it backwards, and twice repeats it, just before the end of the exposition. But significant it turns out to be.

The second movement begins with a deeply thoughtful Adagio in C major. It emerges from its ruminations with a lyrical inspiration on the cello and a reminiscence of the Slavonic melody, which is immediately reintroduced by the piano in the original Andante tempo. It is no coincidence that the four-note motif which is precipitated from this, as the main theme of the closing Allegro vivace, is none other than the cello’s backwards version of the four-note phrase from the Slavonic melody. The revelation inspires such exuberance, such wit and contrapuntal ingenuity, that there is scarcely room in the Allegro vivace for anything but the four-note motif in an apparently inexhaustible variety of transformations.