Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 07/07/2004, uploaded on 04/29/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata No.1 for cello and piano in E Minor, Opus 38        Johannes Brahms

Sonata No.1 begins with an expansive sonata form first movement.  The quiet and expressive first theme in the cello is supported by a simple chordal piano accompaniment.  The forte second theme is built of an arpeggiated chord.  This exposition section closes softly.  Motives from both themes are explored in the development section.  The recapitulation brings a return of the two principal themes in minor, and the coda concludes in major. 

The Allegretto quasi Menuetto is in typical minuet form.  A stately dance in the minor mode is followed by several variants.  This section ends with pizzicatos in the cello.  A contrasting trio possesses some qualities of music by Robert Schumann, Brahms's mentor.  The minuet music returns exactly as before.

 Brahms's finale is a fugue marked Allegro.  The piano introduces the subject in the bass register.  This is answered first in the cello and then in the treble register of the piano.  Melodic similarities between this fugue subject and one composed by Bach in his Art of Fugue have been noticed by several scholars.  This subject is developed by means of several fugal techniques, including inversion and stretto (close imitation of the fugue subject).       Antoine Lederlin

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Cello Sonata No. 1       Johannes Brahms

Brahms composed the largest part of his Cello Sonata in E minor in 1862 but did not write the finale it has today until three years later in 1865. The sonata began life as a set of three movements for cello and piano written for the amateur cellist Josef Gansbacher. In June 1865, Brahms added the fugal finale. However, before publication he suppressed the Adagio movement written in 1862. The result is an odd form for a three movement sonata. The first movement is a large sonata design in a moderate tempo. The second movement is marked "quasi Menuetto" and the last is the fugue. Thus, the sonata is lacking the traditional slow movement.

The actual title given to the composition is "Sonata for piano with violoncello." This was the Classical nomenclature for solo sonatas and Brahms, no doubt, chose it to emphasize the dual importance of both the cello and piano. In other words, the piano was not relegated to a mere accompanimental role but, instead, stood on equal footing with the cello in the presentation and development of ideas. This treatment of the piano and cello together is an important feature of the expansive first movement.

The Allegretto middle movement offers a subtle foreshadowing of Brahms's later Fourth Symphony. Like the Fourth Symphony, which is also in the key of E minor, this movement invokes the sonorities of the old Phrygian mode. According to Malcolm McDonald it also looks forward to some of the scherzi of Mahler.

The fugal last movement is the most original part of the work. Though it looks to the late fugues of Beethoven in its blending of fugue and sonata form, its inspiration lies farther back in the fugues of Bach. Its subject bares a strong resemblance to and was probably consciously modeled after that of Contrapunctus XIII from Bach's Art of Fugue. A non-fugal "second theme" follows the subject and is derived from the fugue's countersubject. It reappears throughout the movement between main entries of the fugal subject. Brahms treats his fugue subject as rigorously as Bach, exhibiting a strong command of contrapuntal techniques such as stretti, inversion and imitation.    Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.