Cello Sonata in G minor Op.5 No.2 (1796)

While Beethoven cannot have been the first composer to write seriously for cello and piano, his two Sonatas Op.5 are certainly the earliest examples of their kind in the regular repertoire. They were written speculatively, it seems, in preparation for a trip to Berlin, where the young composer was to meet the cello-playing Friedrich Wilhelm II and, with any luck, play the works with Jean-Pierre Duport, cello teacher to the King and one of the greatest instrumentalists of the day. In fact, Beethoven did play the Cello Sonatas with Duport and, in return for the dedication of those two scores, Friedrich Wilhelm presented him with a handsome gold snuff box filled with louis d’or.

There was surely more to the conception of Friedrich Wilhelm’s Sonatas than that, however. It is clear from the scoring and the structure of both works, but particularly the second in G minor, that Beethoven had discovered in the cello its innate potential for serious thought and sustained argument and that he was keenly interested in exploring these qualities. It is true that he did not include a full-scale slow movement in his cello sonatas until he came to write the fifth and last of them, in D major Op.102 No.2, in 1815. The slow introduction to the Sonata in G minor, however, an extended two-way improvisation for an authoritative piano and a speculative cello, amounts almost    to a movement in itself.

The Allegro molto più tosto presto, which follows without a break, is firmly in G minor and all the more emphatic in its minor-key attitude for Beethoven’s interest in another valuable cello characteristic – the dramatic potential contained in its uniquely robust physique. He makes particularly striking use of it by departing from convention and presenting two distinct first-subject themes, one elegantly shared between the two instruments in the opening bars, the other hard-driven by a vigorously bowed cello urged on the by piano. There is a brightly contrasting second subject in B flat major but, with the cello in that dynamic mode and Beethoven set on exploiting it by devoting the development section to nothing other than the cello theme, a happy ending seems very unlikely. An abbreviated recapitulation and a dramatic coda confirm the inevitable.

The concluding Rondo is just as firmly in G major and all the more securely for Beethoven’s indulgence this time in the piano. He entrusts it with the introduction of the three main themes – all of which, not least the luminous material of the second episode in C major, are keyboard rather than string inspirations. In spite of its two subversive diversions into the minor, the cello is relegated to scarcely more than a supporting role. Between the two of them, however, they sustain a rondo construction as well developed as any as Beethoven was to write until much later in his career.