Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 08/15/2006, uploaded on 01/15/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata for Cello and Piano in g minor, Op. 19       Sergei Rachmaninoff

Lento - Allegro moderato - Moderato

Allegro scherzando

Andante

Allegro mosso - Moderato - Vivace

Sergei Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, Op. 19, was composed in 1901 together with the second Piano Concerto, and dedicated to Rachmaninoff's friend, cellist Anatoli Brandukov. Brandukov and the composer premiered the work in Moscow in 1901.

The composer's oeuvre can be considered typical of the sentimentalism of the Russian Belle Époque, one of the most productive periods in the development of European music. His compositional heritage is more in the style of Liszt and Chopin, displaying constant virtuosity and grandeur in the writing; his music is characterized by memorable soaring melodies, romantic harmonies and a distinctive Russian flavor.  While most remembered today for his piano concertos, Rachmaninoff demonstrates his love and understanding of the cello not only within the orchestra parts of his concertos, but also with this rich cello sonata, and various short pieces he wrote for the instrument.  

The composer could not deny his pianistic temperament in this piece: the piano "runs the show", while the cello part hovers around it, rather as its ornament and reflection. It is one of the composer's most Romantic works, and one loved by performers and audiences alike; the soaring melodies in the cello are often accompanied by rapid, florid filigree, and the piano solos are concerto-like in effect. Ultimately governed by the composer's melancholy lyricism, the work resonates with the sentimentality of Rachmaninoff's melodies as the cello part floats amid waves of piano sound. 

Like Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, which was composed six years later, the traditional roles of the second and the third movements are "exchanged": the second is a lively Scherzando and the third is a lyrical Andante.   In the fourth movement, darker emotions give way to the light of the final Vivace.

This sonata comes from a productive two decade period in Rachmaninoff's compositional life, that ended when he fled Russia following the 1917 Revolution and the loss of his family's estate.  Rachmaninoff settled in the United States in 1918.  While he enjoyed a successful career as a pianist in Europe and America, he always insisted that composing remained difficult away from his homeland, which he missed greatly.  And indeed, there was a compositional "silence" until 1926, when he wrote the Piano Concerto no.4, followed by only a handful of works over the next 15 years leading up to his death in 1943 in Beverly Hills, California.     Katinka Kleijn

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.