Ballade for cello and piano (1949)

Frank Martin made a speciality of the ballade, writing as many as five of them for a variety of orchestral and chamber ensembles between 1939 and 1972. If the the Ballade for piano and orchestra is the most popular, the Ballade for cello and piano is much the most impressive. Designed as an homage to Brahms, “it suggests,” according to the composer, “the dark colors, compact rhetoric, intricate counterpoint and formal rigor characteristic of that great master.” Although, its complex single-movement form, ending with the double-stopped material with which it begins, is not one Brahms would have devised, its Bach-like seriousess of purpose is entirely worthy of him.