Suite for cello and piano in D minor, Op.16

A composer’s mature thoughts are not always superior to his youthful inspirations. Written originally for cello and piano in 1862, the Suite in D minor was arranged for cello and orchestra decades later, when its Scherzo was replaced by a comparativly tame Gavotte and its Finale, the key to the overall construction, was replaced by a rather less relevant Tarantella. It is true that what is good for the piano is not necessarily suitable for the orchestra but, whatever the reasons for the changes the composer made, long-term opinion seems to have decided against them. The orchestral version of the Suite in D minor rarely, if ever, appears on concert programmes these days.

Common to both versions is the Prélude, which is one of many tributes to J.S. Bach in the music of Saint-Saëns. While the cello pursues an unbroken line of semiquavers very much in the manner of a prelude in a Bach cello suite, the piano almost impertinently fills in a few harmonies and, just before the end, introduces a little phrase that will be of interest later. The Sérénade changes the scene to a mid-nineteenth century Parisian salon, where the fashionable hint of Spanish colouring in the introduction and accompaniment to the elegant cello line is by no means out of place. The Scherzo is similarly Parisian in its approximation to the scherzo-valse, which was a much favoured way of combining the brilliance of the scherzo with the lilt of the waltz. At the heart of the Suite (in both versions) is the Romance which, with its serenely melodious outer sections offset by a passionate middle section and a brief cadenza, is a serious rival to “The Swan” as a vehicle for sustained cello eloquence. The vigorous Finale holds the collection together by referring back to the first movement, first by adapting the little phrase from the end as a fugue subject and finally by reminding the cello of the busy preludial figuration with which it began.

Gerald Larner©