Cello Sonata in F major Op.6 (1881-3)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Cello Sonata in F major Op.6 (1881-3)

Allegro con brio

Andante ma non troppo

Finale: allegro vivo

Before Dvorák revealed what it was really capable of in his Concerto in B minor the cello was treated with caution by even the most accomplished of composers - Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, even Brahms. At the age of seventeen, however, in his first work for a stringed instrument with piano, Richard Strauss had no such inhibitions. The fact that the score was revised a year or two later makes the young composer’s assurance scarcely less astonishing: he was still less than twenty when the Cello Sonata was published and first performed by its dedicatee Hanus Wihan (to whom the Dvorák Concerto was to be dedicated eleven years later) in Nuremberg in 1883.

It is clear from the start of the Sonata in F major, as the bow is emphatically and repeatedly drawn over massive multi-stopped chords on all four strings, that the cello is to play an epic role here. It has to be versatile too. The cello goes on to join a tenderly lyrical melody on the A-string to the vigorously heroic opening theme and then, as the piano broaches the sombre harmonies associated with the second subject, to express its agitated sympathy at the other end of its range down on the C-string. When that new material emerges exultant in the major the cello is there again, adding its eloquently melodious voice to the fistfuls of fortissimo chords on the piano. In the development section the cello’s attention is divided between agile exchanges of short motifs in all registers, longer lines on the A-string and participation in an ambitious four-part fugal passage initiated by the piano. As the principal events are recalled - in such a way as to place the climax of the construction on the triumphant proclamation of the second subject in F major - both instruments must not only repeat their earlier virtuoso achievements but excel them too.

One of the problems Strauss’s distinguished predecessors had in writing for the cello was, to judge by the rarity of full-scale slow movements in their sonatas, a lack of faith in its ability to sustain extended melodic lines. It is not, on the other hand, a problem here. The cello not only blends compassionately with the piano in its opening lament in D minor but also adopts the grieving melody for itself. It joins in a duet on new material with the right hand of the piano and, in the middle of the movement, gives voice to a spontaneous expression of passion high in its upper register. It cannot, however, avert either the recall of the lament or, in spite of one moment of lyrical radiance, the gloomy ending.

The last movement, newly written for the revised version in 1883, combines the functions of scherzo and finale. Based on a provocative little dance tune, it is a dazzling display of wit for both instruments. To suit the cello, and for the sake of melodic variety, it incorporates more expressive material which, however, is so skilfully integrated with the main theme that there is scarcely a transition between them. It is one of the more expressive ideas, something Mendelssohn might have thought of, that inspires a magical episode in the development section and is heard again as a quiet echo at the very end.