Cello Sonata No.1 (1939)

The first, probably the best and certainly the most serious, of Martinu’s three cello sonatas was written at a traumatic time for the composer. Dated “Paris, 12th May, 1939” it could not be anything but profoundly affected by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi forces two months earlier. There was also a more personal inspiration to the work – his doomed passion for his pupil Vitézslava Kaprálová, a brilliantly gifted composer then in her early twenties.

Taking all that into account, the First Cello Sonata is not as grim as it might be. The opening on piano is certainly urgent but, from the early entry of the cello onwards, the movement is sustained by a characteristic rhythmic exhilaration which generates such a positive impetus towards the closing bars that the unhappy ending comes almost as a surprise. The lonely opening of the slow movement, in an exposed wide-spaced piano texture, suggests that this is the point where despair is going to show through. Indeed, the elegiac emotion becomes ever more apparent with the expressive entry of the cello and the approach to a central climax marked by piano dissonances of a vehemence rarely found in Martinu’s music. The closing Allegro con brio revives the rhythmic energy invested in the opening Poco allegro and, indeed, quotes from its thematic material. Now, however, it has a frenzied quality which, although there are quieter episodes, animates the pursuit to a, significantly, not so bitter end.

The first, probably the best and certainly the most serious, of Martinu’s three cello sonatas was written at a traumatic time for the composer. Dated “Paris, 12th May, 1939” it could not be anything but profoundly affected by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi forces two months earlier. The nature of the work suggests, however, that there is more to it than the intense concern felt by all members of the Czech community in Paris at the time – a concern Martinu had already expressed in inspired anticipation in the remarkable Double Concerto completed on the day of the Munich agreement in 1938. The Cello Sonata is a more personal work and probably relates also to his passion for his pupil Vitézslava Kaprálová, a brilliantly gifted composer in her early twenties. Their on-off affair obsessed both of them until she died of tuberculosis – at the age of 25 and just two months after her marriage to the unfortunate Jiri Mucha – in June 1940.

Taking all that into account the First Cello Sonata is not as grim as it might be. The opening on piano is certainly urgent but, from the early entry of the cello onwards, the movement is sustained by a characteristic rhythmic exhilaration which drives forward the development of the opening theme on both instruments. The impetus is reduced, by way of a winding down low on the cello, for what one might assume to be a more relaxed second subject but which is actually a pause for breath before it is impulsively taken up again. This time, however, the always busy figuration does allows for the entry of a new theme presented in broader strokes on the cello with emphatic off-beat punctuation from the piano. It is propelled towards the closing bars in such a positive way that the unhappy ending comes almost as a surprise.

The lonely opening of the slow movement, in an exposed wide-spaced piano texture, suggests that this is the point where despair is going to show through. Indeed, the elegiac emotion becomes ever more apparent with the expressive entry of the cello and the approach to a central climax marked by piano dissonances of a vehemence rarely found in Martinu’s music. An episode of Ceach nostalgia precedes an allusion to the lonely opening, now coloured by a pizzicato cello, and a quietly ruminative ending with an oddly worrying rhythmic figure on the piano.

The closing Allegro con brio revives the rhythmic energy invested in the opening Poco allegro and, indeed, quotes from its thematic material. Now, however, it has a frenzied quality which, although there are quieter episodes, animates the pursuit to a, significantly, not so bitter end. When the sonata was first performed, by Pierre Fournier and Rudolf Firkusny in Paris in May 1940, a month before the German army marched into the city, “the view of those present,” Martinu recalled some years later, “was that it was the last greeting, the last ray from a better world. For some few moments we grasped that music can give and how it can make us forget reality.”

Gerald Larner © 2009