Cello Sonata in D major Op.102 No.2 (1815)

Of Beethoven’s five Cello Sonatas only the last has a true slow movement. Each of the other four includes an Adagio but only as an introduction to a quicker movement. Even the full-scale Adagio of Op.102 No.2 is an open-ended construction designed to lead directly into the final Allegro. Looking at it from our point of view, after a century and a half of casting the cello in the role of philosopher and friend, it is a surprising statistic. From Beethoven’s point of view, by writing a cello sonata of any kind he was taking a risk that no Viennese composer of any significance had taken before him. With the last two cello sonatas, however, since they were written for Beethoven favourite cellist at the time, Joseph Linke of the Schuppanzich Quartet, the risk was minimal.

The nearest relation to the D major Sonata, at least as far as their respective first movements are concerned, is the String Quartet in F minor Op.95. Neither of them, driven as they are by the energetic potential of a muscular group of four semiquavers thrust into the opening bars, have much time for expansive melody. The Allegro con brio of the cello sonata is not as agitated in its progress as that of the string quartet but it is scarcely less terse in construction and no less obsessed by its four-note motif.

The lyrical potential of the cello is more consistently applied in the slow movement. Even in this Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto, however, Beethoven is not inclined to entrust it with a sustained line of the kind awarded to the violin in the Adagio espressivo of the last of his Violin Sonatas Op.96. He is more likely to confine the cello to the even quavers represented by the opening theme, profoundly serious in its D minor harmonies though it is, or to have it weave a sinuous counterpoint round the more radiant melody introduced by the piano in the A major middle section. After the elaborately detailed reprise, on the other hand, it is even more enterprising than the piano in effecting a direct transition – by way of a devious harmonic route and a gradually assembled scalic theme – into the Allegro fugato.

One of the first of the late-Beethoven fugal finales, it is also one of the most interesting in that towards the end, having participated as one voice in a strictly four-part texture, the cello is at last allowed to make a sustained melodic intervention on the A-string – not for long but long enough to add another dimension to what might otherwise have been an austere invention.

Of Beethoven’s five Cello Sonatas only the last has a true slow movement. Each of the other four includes an Adagio but only as an introduction to a quicker movement. Even the full-scale Adagio of Op.102 No.2 is an open-ended construction designed to lead directly into the final Allegro. Looking at it from our point of view, after a century and a half of casting the cello in the role of philosopher and intimate friend, it is a surprising statistic. From Beethoven’s point of view, on the other hand, by writing a cello sonata of any kind, with or without a slow movement, he was taking a risk that no Viennese composer of any significance had taken before him. Clearly, although Haydn’s two Cello Concertos demonstrate that there must have been brilliant exceptions to the rule, cellists were not in general so accomplished as to encourage long-term creative investment in them.

The stimulus for the composition of Beethoven’s first two Cello Sonatas Op.5 was his visit to Berlin in 1796 when he could not only hope to receive a handsome reward for them from the cello-playing King Friedrich Wilhelm II but also look forward to performing them with Pierre Duport, one of the most celebrated instrumentalists of the day. The third Cello Sonata Op.69 was dedicated to an amateur cellist, Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, but first performed by Nikolaus Kraft, precociously gifted son of the cellist who had collaborated with Haydn on his Concerto in D. As for the last two Cello Sonatas Op.102, they were written in 1815 for Beethoven’s favourite cellist at the time, Joseph Linke, and dedicated to Countess Erdödy, who had given Linke employment in her household after a fire at the Razumovsky palace had caused the temporary disbandment of the Schuppanzigh Quartet.

The closest relation to the Cello Sonata in D major, at least as far as their respective first movements are concerned, is the String Quartet in F minor Op.95. Neither of them, driven as they are by the energetic potential of a muscular group of four semiquavers thrust into the opening bars, have much time for expansive melody. The Allegro con brio of the Cello Sonata is not as agitated in its progress as that of the String Quartet but it is scarcely less terse in construction and no less obsessed by its four-note motif. It seems at first that the piano is the more aggressive of the two instruments and, indeed, it is the cello that introduces both the more relaxed aspect of the first subject and the lyrically expressive second subject, but not without making an emphatic allusion to the four-note motif in the transition between them. The cello is similarly instrumental in keeping its memory alive in the development and actually competes with the piano in working towards its reintroduction in D major. The relaxed aspect of the first subject is excluded from a dramatically changed recapitulation.

The lyrical potential of the cello is more consistently applied in the slow movement. Even in this Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto, however Beethoven is not inclined to entrust it with a sustained line of the kind awarded to the violin in the Adagio espressivo of the last of his Violin Sonatas Op.96. He is more likely to confine the cello to the even quavers represented by the opening theme, profoundly serious in its D minor harmonies though it is, or to have it weave a sinuous counterpoint round the more radiant melody introduced by the piano in the A major middle section. After the elaborately detailed reprise, on the other hand, it is even more enterprising than the piano in effecting a direct transition - by way of a devious harmonic route and a gradually assembled scalic theme - into the Allegro fugato.

One of the first of the late-Beethoven fugal finales, it is also one of the most interesting in that towards the end, having participated as one voice in a strictly four-part texture, the cello is at last allowed to make a sustained melodic intervention on the A-string - not for long but long enough to add another dimension to what might otherwise have been an austere invention.