Cello Sonata No.2 in F major Op.123 (1905)

Completing a the Second Cello Sonata thirty-five years after the First, by now a popular favourite, Saint-Saëns was prepared for the comparisons that would be made. “Of course,” he wrote to Durand, “the Second Sonata will not be valued as highly as the First… One must resign oneself to the inevitable.” But, if he felt some sympathy for his publisher in a potentially unprofitable situation, he was evidently not too worried about it from his own point of view. Certainly, having found the ideal cellist in Joseph Hollman, who had given the first performance of the Second Cello Concerto two years earlier, he had no misgivings about expanding the form to accommodate everything he felt about an instrument he knew particularly well.

The first movement is not so much about sonata form – which is observed only in the broadest of terms – as about the cello. From the arresting start, the characterisation of the instrument is presented in nothing less than epic terms. As the second theme shows, after the piano has anticipated its outline in a molto tranquillo transition, the cello is no less capable of poetry than of heroism. At the same time as the cello introduces the new melody, incidentally, an expressive Tchaikovsky-like descending motif appears in the piano part above it: both these themes have a long-term function to perform.

It was presumably because he had so much more to say about the cello that Saint-Saëns devised a Scherzo in the form of a theme and eight variations. Writing to Durand about it, he said, “I haven’t followed the fashion of making variations no more alike than the moon and a kipper, but they are very different from each other even so.” In fact, the cello is presented in a wide variety of roles here, including the academic in a three-part fuge, until its voice dwindles away in the moto perpetuo at the end.

One of Saint-Saëns’s favourite forms for projecting the lyrical properties of the cello was the romance. This Romanza in B flat, the fourth and last of its kind, would “make cellists happy,” he said, “though not as much as The Swan,” he added. In fact, as the composer observed, this Poco adagio is “more serious” than The Swan and would “make sensitive souls weep.” It begins in serenity and, in spite of an emotional crisis at the climax of the construction, ends that way.

The closing Allegro non troppo, Saint-Saëns remarked, would “wake up those people the other movements had sent to sleep.” While there is no shortage of thematic material – or dramatic event, or instrumental virtuosity – to entertain those it wakes up, the finer points of the finale would be lost on those with no memory of at least the first movement. The theme taken up at an early stage by the cello, without pausing for breath after its introduction of the main theme in F major, incorporates the descending Tchaikovsky motif, much of which is made in the development. But none of these thematic manoeuvres, which are so discreetly executed that they could almost be accidental, is allowed to impede the dynamic onward thrust towards the tumultuous ending.

The Second Cello Sonata stands in much the same relation to the First as the Second Piano Trio to the First Piano Trio. Both the late works, written in winter retreat in Algeria decades after the earlier examples, are much more ambitious in scale - with one more movement in each case - and both were destined to achieve nothing like the popularity of the more youthful predecessors.

At least as far as the Second Cello Sonata was concerned, Saint-Saëns was prepared for the comparisons that would be made. “Of course,” he wrote to Durand on completing the work in 1905, “the Second Sonata will not be valued as highly as the First; when La Fontaine published his second collection of Fables every one, by common consent, declared it inferior to the first. One must resign oneself to the inevitable.” But, if he felt some sympathy for his publisher in a potentially unprofitable situation, he was evidently not too worried about it from his own point of view. Certainly, having found the ideal cellist in Joseph Hollman, who had given the first performance of the Second Cello Concerto two years earlier, he had no misgivings about expanding the form to accommodate everything he felt about an instrument he knew particularly well.

The first movement is not so much about sonata form – which is observed only in the broadest of terms – as about the cello. From the arresting start, with the cello surging upwards from a multi-stopped chord of F major and striding down again in emphatic even-quaver or double-dotted rhythms, the characterisation of the instrument is presented in nothing less than epic terms. As the second theme shows, after the piano has anticipated its outline in a molto tranquillo transition, the cello is no less capable of poetry than of heroism. Strangely, at the same time as the cello introduces the new melody, an expressive Tchaikovsky-like descending motif appears in the piano part above it: since both themes, not just the cello’s, have a long-term function to perform, Saint-Saëns sets his performers a delicate and probably insoluble problem of balance here.

The other two main themes of the first movement – an ardently romantic cantabile drawn by the cello in dotted rhythms over rippling arpeggios and an effusive cello phrase winding down into the lower register against syncopated piano chords - are less problematic. In the recapitulation, which follows a fortissimo climax generated by massive cello chords and left-hand piano octaves, the Tchaikovsky motif is recalled not at the same time as its lyrical companion but just after it, giving it more exposure.

It was presumably because he had so much more to say about the cello that Saint-Saëns devised a Scherzo in the form of a theme and eight variations. Writing to Durand about it, he said, “I haven’t followed the fashion of making variations no more alike than the moon and a kipper, but they are very different from each other even so.” In fact, the cello is presented in a wide variety of roles here - offering a syncopated two-note commentary on the piano theme in the first variation, taking part in a vigorous exchange of muscular phrases in the second, alternating between lyrical line and gently mobile accompaniment in the third, restricting itself to pizzicato colouring in the fourth, asserting itself against an equally insistent piano in the fifth, joining in a three-part fugue in the sixth, adding its voice to a different kind of imitative counterpoint in the seventh, and running along in gradually dwindling moto perpetuo in the last.

One of Saint-Saëns’s favourite forms for projecting the lyrical properties of the cello was the romance. This Romanza in B flat, the fourth and last of its kind, would “make cellists happy,” he said, “though not as much as The Swan,” he added, referring to the one piece from The Carnival of the Animals that he allowed his contemporaries to hear. In fact, as the composer observed, this Poco adagio is “more serious” than The Swan and would “make sensitive souls weep.” It begins in serenity with idyllic harmonies on the piano and a shapely cello melody derived, at least to start with, from the second theme of the first movement. Although that opening idea recurs twice later, preceded each time by a cello cadenza, there are two minor-key episodes, the second of them provoking a crisis at the climax of a construction remarkable for its expressive spontaneity. The idyll is regained at the end.

The closing Allegro non troppo, Saint-Saëns remarked, would “wake up those people the other movements had sent to sleep.” While there is no shortage of thematic material – or dramatic event, or instrumental virtuosity – to entertain those it wakes up, the finer points of the finale would be lost on those with no memory of at least the first movement. The D minor theme taken up at an early stage by the cello, without pausing for breath after its introduction of the main theme in F major, incorporates the descending Tchaikovsky motif, much of which is made in the development. There is an allusion also to the third theme of the first movement, the romantic cantabile originally presented in dotted rhythms. None of these thematic manoeuvres, which are so discreetly executed that they could almost be accidental, is allowed to impede the dynamic onward thrust towards the tumultuous ending. onward thrust towards the tumultuous ending.