Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 09/03/2014, uploaded on 02/16/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

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

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Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38  Johannes Brahms

Brahms composed the first two movements of this work during the summer of 1862, as well as an Adagio which was later deleted, with the final movement composed in 1865. The sonata was initially titled "Sonate für Klavier und Violoncello" (for Piano and Cello) and the piano was described as "a partner - often a leading, often a watchful and considerate partner - but it should under no circumstances assume a purely accompanying role".  The piece could be seen as a tribute to J.S. Bach; the principal themes of the first and third movements are based on Contrapunctus 4 and 13 of The Art of Fugue. 

The first movement is in a long-lined sonata form, opening with solo cello over chords in the keyboard, a melody that gains and diminishes in intensity and dynamics, and then passes to the keyboard, where the same general curve is followed without the same notes; the breadth and lyrical quality of this passage are characteristic of much of the movement.

Brahms's interest in Baroque and earlier music can be felt also in the second movement, written as a minuet and trio. The movement features a lilt and ornamentation reminiscent at times of a French Baroque style.  A fugal opening to the third movement is in fact the opening of another sonata-form movement, which brilliantly blends Baroque and Classical compositional technique with Brahms' musical language, and serves as a fitting finale to a masterpiece of the chamber music repertoire.      Gabriel Cabezas

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.