Cello Sonata in D major Op.12 (1911)

Nikolay Myakovsky (1881-1950)

Cello Sonata in D major Op.12 (1911)

Adagio - andante -

Allegro passionato - adagio

As the composer of no fewer than twenty-seven symphonies, among several other major orchestral scores, Myaskovsky had comparatively little time for chamber music. His string quartets add up to a meagre total of thirteen and, apart from that, there are just two cello sonatas and a violin sonata. The First Cello Sonata was written in 1911, at about the same time as he left the St Petersburg Conservatoire - by which time, having spent his early twenties following family tradition in a military career, he was a mature composer with two entries already registered in his catalogue of symphonies.

Certainly, there is nothing of the student in the Cello Sonata in D, least of all in the daringly sparse textures of the Adagio introduction that supplies much of the material of the work and defines its shape to some extent. At the same time there is a youthful freshness about the melody which so captivatingly emerges on the piano as the tempo changes to Andante. The incorporation in that melody of the rising third and fourth from the first cello entry in the opening bars of the Adagio seems entirely spontaneous. After a transition demanded by strangely aggressive piano chords, the same intervals take a prominent place in a second main theme, this one introduced by the cello and adopted by both instruments as the material for a stormy and increasingly animated middle section. Although the first theme is heard in skilfully integrated counterpoint at one point, its serenity is restored to it only when the tempo settles back to Andante and the harmonies to D major.

The second movement, which follows without a break after another transition of aggressive piano chords, is less concerned with thematic unity. The link here is the descending fourth at the beginning of the theme urged by the cello on the D minor arpeggios of the piano in the opening bars. It is the one feature the first theme has in common with the much more lyrical, faintly exotic melody proposed by the piano after it has contrived a relaxation in the tempo and a corresponding modulation to F major. Apparently the more vulnerable of the two themes, that second subject actually carries the weight of a largamente declaration at the end of the development section and, even more impressively, at the climax of the whole construction - just before the cyclic return of the D major Adagio from the very beginning of the work.