Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 02/27/2009, uploaded on 02/27/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata for Piano and Cello, Op. 102, No. 2 in D     Ludwig van Beethoven

The two Sonatas Opus 102, written in the summer of 1815, stand on the threshold of Beethoven's last period. Beethoven's creativity was marked by a newfound interest in the strict discipline of fugue, as well as a fascination with open-ended forms. The second sonata was composed for the excellent cellist Joseph Linke, and dedicated to Countess Mary Erdody. It opens with a bold and compact Allegro con brio, with the piano part obviously tailored-made for the composer himself. The Adagio is one of Beethoven's great tragic utterances, and shows a progressive increase in poignancy, from its dark choral-like opening, through a warmly lyrical D Major middle section and intensified reprise, to a coda in which the cello introduces a bitter-sweet melody of infinite sadness. The calm of the slow movement is broken hesitantly by the most "neutral" material imaginable: a simple scale. From this scale an Allegro fugato emerges. This fugue was Beethoven's first important piece of its kind since the Eroica Variations of 1802. It is among the most uncompromisingly demanding pieces he ever wrote, together with the fugues of the Hammerklavier Sonata, the Diabelli Variations and the String Quartet Opus 133.    Katinka Kleijn

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.