Second Suite for Cello Op.80 (1967)

The immediate inspiration for Britten’s three Cello Suites was the playing of Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom the whole series is dedicated. The composer had first met the cellist when the latter gave an early performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto in the Royal Festival Hall in 1960. By the time Britten got to work on the first Cello Suite Op.72, having in the meantime written the Cello Sonata Op.65 and the Cello Symphony Op.68 for the same soloist, he knew the Rostropovich technique and personality exceptionally well - which must have been a reassuring support for a composer engaged on music that, texturally, leaves him nowhere to hide.

It was not, however, until he came to write the Second Suite in 1967 that Britten entrusted himself and his chosen cellist - a great Bach player, of course - with a direct response to the challenge represented not only by the Bach Cello Suites but also the Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Although there is a Fuga movement in the First Cello Suite, it is nowhere near as ambitious in contrapuntal terms as the Fuga of the Second Suite. The later Suite is, in fact, the most abstract and, both thematically and structurally, the most elusive of the three. The one consistent thematic feature, it seems, is the rising fourth from A to D at the very beginning of the opening Declamato. It isn’t heard again in that form until near the end of the movement, although it does appear in expanded, contracted or inverted variants throughout the piece, including the closing cadence.

Unlike the essentially improvisatory Declamato, the Fuga is a precisely calculated intellectual strategy. While the fugue subject includes a prominent and structurally significant falling fourth from D to A, a more remarkable feature of the theme is that each note is separated from the next by a rest. As well as giving the theme a distinctive rhythmic profile, this device allows the cellist to introduce a counter-subject by placing its notes between those of the main subject. At one point, in fact, he simulates in this way the effect of three parts played simultaneously. After a Scherzo which makes witty mischief with the angrily articulated last two notes of its main theme, there is another ingenious inspiration in the Andante lento - percussive pizzicato material in a steady 6/8 accompanying an expressive melody bowed in an apparently slower 2/4.

The closing Ciaccona is Britten’s modest answer to Bach’s violin Chaconne in D minor. A challengingly sustained construction (lasting as long as seven minutes), it is based on a five-bar ground bass that covers the descending fourth from D to A. While avoiding a too regular cycle of five-bar variations - largely by means of a comparatively free and fantastically scored middle section - and without labouring the thematic connections, Britten ends with work with a felicitous memory of the opening Declamato.

Rupert Avis©2002