Programme — Sonata in G minor BWV 1029 (before 1741), Vivace, Adagio … — César Franck

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Sonata in G minor BWV 1029 (before 1741)

Vivace

Adagio

Allegro

Considering that he must have known at least one extraordinarily accomplished cellist – he surely wouldn’t have written the six solo suites in the hope that one would just turn up – it is surprising that, as far as we know, Bach wrote no sonatas for cello and harpsichord. There are six sonatas for violin and harpsichord, written in Cöthen at much the same time perhaps as the solo sonatas and partitas, but nothing of the kind for cello. The nearest equivalent is the three sonatas for viola da gamba, an instrument much in favour at Cöthen during Bach’s time there since it had distinguished exponents both in the composer’s friend and colleague Christian Ferdinand Abel and in Prince Leopold himself. While it is most likely that the sonatas were intended for one or the other of them, it is not impossible that they were written in Leipzig for Abel’s son Carl Friedrich, whose first instrument was the viola da gamba and who moved to that city for a few years after the death of his father in 1737.

The consolation for cellists is that, with little adaptation, the sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord make attractive sonatas for cello and piano – rather than cello and harpsichord, that is, since the combination doesn’t really work with these precariously balanced works. Obviously, the sound is different with cello and piano but the basic trio-sonata texture – the pianist’s left and right hands taking the bass and top lines respectively, the cello taking the middle line – remains the same.

It has been suggested that the Sonata in G minor originated as a concerto of some kind, presumably because of its virtuoso scoring, its three-movement structure, and the similarity between its opening theme and that of Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G. However that may be, after the briefly delayed first entry of the right hand of the keyboard part, the three-part texture prevails throughout. It is true that the left hand, whose function is occasionally limited to providing basic harmonic support, is less animated than the other two parts in the elaborate contrapuntal exchanges of the first movement. It is by no means deprived of melodic interest, however, and there are two passages where (in this version) the cello takes over the bass-line duties in its place.

The Adagio begins as though it were to be an aria for cello, which carries an expressively detailed line over a melodically elusive right-hand part and a six-note figure in the left. But then, after the repeat of the first half of the binary structure, the cello renounces the initiative to follow the suggestions first of the right hand and then the left. Given the three-part fugal texture of much of the closing Allegro, equality is the general rule – except, that is, in two extended non-fugal episodes in the major where the left hand never gets to play the new melody initially presented by the cello under undulating arpeggios in the right. In the second episode, however, it does at least succeed in liberating itself from the repeated quavers awarded to it in the first.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Cello Sonata in F major Op.5 No.1 (1796)

Adagio sostenuto – Allegro

Allegro vivace

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 in preparation for a trip to Berlin – or, more likely, in Berlin itself – where the young composer could expect the cello-playing Friedrich Wilhelm II to take an interest in them and even have them performed by Jean-Pierre Duport, his cello teacher and one of the greatest instrumentalists of the day. In fact, Beethoven did play the sonatas with Duport and, in return for the dedication of the two scores, Friedrich Wilhelm presented him with a gold snuff box filled with louis d’or – “no ordinary snuffbox,” Beethoven later remarked, “but such a one as it might have been customary to give to an ambassador.”

There was surely more to the conception of Friedrich Wilhelm’s Sonatas than the hope of a handsome reward. It is clear from the scoring and the structure of both works 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 any of his five Cello Sonatas until he came to write the last of them, in D major Op.102 No.2, in 1815. Both the Op.5 Sonatas do, however, begin with a slow introduction where cello and piano engage in a speculative exchange of ideas.

Although the Adagio sostenuto of the present works gets nowhere, in the sense that it anticipates none of the thematic events of the following Allegro, it does indicate that cello and piano can compete on equal terms – which they go on to do in an often dramatic and wide-ranging sonata movement. Abundant in melodic ideas, the Allegro is illuminated above all by the outstanding quality of the main theme which, though introduced by the piano, is just as well adapted to the cello. That theme dominates the development and it makes an emphatically conclusive final appearance on cello as the opening tempo returns to put the movement back on course after briefly disorientating Adagio and Presto interventions.

The dominance of one melodic idea is even more marked in the case of a rondo like the Allegro vivace, which tends to supply its episodes from variants of the rondo theme itself – as in the first of them, approached by a semiquaver run on the piano and introduced in C minor in a high register on the same instrument. It is followed, however, by the most striking material in the whole movement, a sort of Hungarian dance in B flat minor. But that is the one rival to the rondo theme, a timely last reminder of which occurs in the last few bars when the tempo slows down to a near-stationary Adagio.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1945)

Suite populaire espagnole

arranged for cello and piano by Maurice Maréchal

El paño moruno

Asturiana

Jota

Nana

Canción

Polo

Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, which he wrote for a Spanish soprano in Paris in 1914, have proved to be highly attractive not only to singers but also to instrumentalists, not least the French cellist Maurice Maréchal. Leaving out the second of the songs, Seguidilla murciana, Maréchal arranged the remaining six as a Suite populaire espagnole for cello and piano – using the word “populaire” not in the sense of well-liked, incidentally, but in the same sense as “populares” in Falla’s original title (which really ought to be translated as “Seven Spanish Folk Songs” rather than “Seven Spanish Popular Songs”). All the tunes are, in fact, drawn from traditional Spanish sources and allied with a accompaniments as idiomatic as only Falla could make them.

Maréchal’s arrangement was not simply a matter of leaving the piano part as it was in the original and rewriting the vocal part to suit the cello. One particular aspect of the piano part, which is its guitar-like repeated notes and arpeggios, is quite naturally transferred to cello pizzicato in, for example, the introduction to El paño moruno (“The Moorish Cloth”), a song with strong Andalusian colours from the province of Murcia. Although the cello is confined to the melodic line in Asturiana, a lament from the North of Spain, its guitar alter ego is restored to it in the Aragonese Jota, which is a most effective alternation of vigorous dance and amorous song. In Nana, a lullaby from Andalusia, the cello plays much the same quietly melodious role as in Asturiana but adds a new kind of colouring in Canción with its double-stopped harmonies in the middle and its artful glissando at the end. In Polo, a fierce dance from Andalusia, the cello is so fully occupied with its flamenco vocalisation, its ornamentations and exclamations, and the piano so busily active as a virtual guitar that there is no time for any exchange of roles.

César Franck (1822-1890)

Sonata in A major (1886)

arranged for cello and piano by Jules Delsart

Allegretto ben moderato

Allegro

Recitative-Fantasia: ben moderato

Allegretto poco mosso

Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major has had a double life since shortly after it was born. The cellist Jules Delsart was so impressed by the work when he heard an early performance in Paris in 1887 that he asked Franck if he would allow him to arrange the violin part for cello. The composer, who had known Delsart since his Conservatoire days, readily agreed and the cello version was published, with his blessing, less than a year after the original first appeared in print.

The Sonata in A major will always be most closely associated, however, with Eugène Ysaÿe, the Belgian violinist to whom it was dedicated as a wedding present in 1886. It was his inspired advocacy that won the work its early acceptance as a masterpiece everywhere in Europe. He was responsible also for the Allegro ben moderato tempo direction of the first movement, which in the manuscript is marked Allegretto moderato. Having taken it rather slowly when he and his accompanist sight-read it at the wedding reception, Ysaÿe insisted on retaining that tempo in his subsequent performances. Franck accepted the situation and changed the tempo direction to Allegro ben moderato before the publication of the work in 1887.

Whether he liked it or not, the composer no doubt agreed that it is important that the material of the first movement should be firmly impressed on the mind and that the slower tempo helps in that respect. It is essentially an introduction, its main function being to establish the significance of the rising minor third – the interval which occurs in the first bar of the piano part, at the beginning of the first entry of (in this version) the cello with the main theme, and at innumerable other points in the movement. There is a second subject, introduced forte e largamente by the piano alone, and this too begins with a minor third, but falling rather than rising this time and including three notes instead of two.

Both versions of the basic interval are gently but firmly established before the piano plunges into the Allegro. The first theme, hidden between the pianist’s two hands, is based on the three-note version in rising order. It is an impetuous, syncopated theme in D minor which seems just as well conceived for the cello as for the middle register of the piano. The initial momentum is halted for a dramatic recall of the main theme of the Allegretto ben moderato, to make it quite clear that the second-subject melodies about to be introduced by the cello are germane to the basic material of the work. In the development section, once the Allegro tempo is re-established, the first and second subjects are combined in an extraordinary feat of contrapuntal virtuosity – only to be set apart again in the recapitulation.

Described by Ysaÿe as “the most gripping part of the work,” the Recitative-Fantasia begins, like the previous Allegro, in D minor. It is concerned at first with an improvised review of the basic material, the piano and cello approaching it each in its own way. But they join together in a forceful climax which then very effectively melts into minor harmonies for the comparatively lyrical second half of the movement. A liberal offering of quite new melodies for the cello, accompanied by flowing triplets in the piano, sustains the poetry to the end.

One inspired characteristic of the theme which introduces the last movement in A major is that it combines the two versions of the basic material. Another is its melodic beauty. Yet another is how well it lends itself to extended canonic treatment by the two instruments. Between its several reappearances the undeveloped melodies from the lyrical second half of the previous movement are re-introduced and integrated not only with the rondo theme but also with the basic material of the first movement. It is a masterful process of unification which fully justifies the triumphant and extended celebrations in the coda.