Sonata in A major for cello and piano

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 the string instrument 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.