Concert programme — Debussy, Britten, Webern & Grieg

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Cello Sonata (1915)

Prologue: lent

Sérénade: modérément animé - vivace - modérément animé -

Finale: animé

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Suite No.1 for solo cello (1965)

Canto primo: sostenuto e largamente -

Fuga: andante moderato -

Lamento: lento rubato -

Canto secondo: sostenuto -

Serenata: allegretto pizzicato -

Marcia: alla marcia moderato -

Canto terzo: sostenuto -

Bordone: moderato quasi recitativo -

Moto perpetuo e canto quarto: presto - sostenuto

Anton Webern (1883-1945)

Two Pieces for cello and piano (1899)

Langsam

Langsam

Three Little Pieces for cello and piano Op.11 (1914)

Mässige Achtel

Sehr bewegt

Äusserst ruhig

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Cello Sonata in A minor Op.36 (1883)

Allegro agitato - presto

Andante molto tranquillo

Allegro - allegro molto e marcato

“I like its proportions and, in the best sense of the word, its almost classical form,”said Debussy of his Cello Sonata. By “classical form” he did not mean sonata form. Working in the middle of the First World War and conscious of his national heritage - he signed himself “Claude Debussy Musicien Français” on the title page - he was thinking here, and in two more sonatas he was to write in the last few years of his life, of pre-classical models by French composers like Couperin or Rameau. There is an indication of that in the keyboard introduction to the Cello Sonata which, before the poetic intervention of the cello, sounds like the opening of a French overture. If there are traces of commedia dell’arte in the fantastic nocturnal scenario of the Sérénade and of the Spanish idiom in the rondo-shaped Finale, at least there is nothing German about them.

Exhaustive though they are in their examination of the resources of the instrument, Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello do leave scope for later composers to attempt something different. Unlike the violin sonatas and partitas, for example, they are not abundant in counterpoint and there is not one example of a fugue. So when Britten came to write the first of his three suites for unaccompanied Rostropovich he accepted the challenge immediately, featuring a fugue as the first of the six movements that come between the recurrences of the opening Canto material. Unlike Bach he also makes abundant use of such post-Bach devices as pizzicato (echoing Debussy in the Serenata), harmonics (most effectively in the Marcia) and the mute (in a pastoral episode in the Bordone).

With a composer like Webern, whose mature style is such an extreme departure from anything anyone else had done before - including his teacher Arnold Schoenberg - it is always reassuring to hear early examples of his work which, like the romantic Two Pieces for cello and piano of 1899, offer such convincing evidence of his credentials in conventional terms. Whether the sensitively scored and minutely detailed Three Little Pieces Op.11 are more rewarding, concentrated into their two and a half minutes duration, is a matter for the individual listener to decide.

Grieg’s cellist brother, for whom he wrote the his Cello Sonata in A minor, must have been amazed by the scope of its construction, the breadth of its expression and the extravagantly heroic role in which the cello is cast. The scale of the ambition behind it can be assessed from the drastic contrast between the two main themes of the opening Allegro agitato, from the concerto-size cadenza and the extraordinary coda with its allusions to the Piano Concerto in A minor. There is heroism of a different kind in the slow movement in the form of the Homage March from Grieg’s incidental music to Sigurd Jorsalfar, which is admissable here by virtue of its resemblance to a prominent theme in the Allegro agitato. Amid the domestic delights represented by Norwegian folk song in the last movement it is surprising that cello and piano should fall out as seriously as they do in the middle. Harmony is restored however and celebrated in a big way at the end.