Though both were written by Frenchmen less than thirty years apart, the Franck and Debussy cello sonatas are musical opposites. While the Franck Sonata epitomizes the grand Romantic virtuoso sonata of the 19th century, the Debussy Sonata for Violoncello and Piano is a neo-Classical, thoroughly 20th-century work that goes out of its way to avoid both technical display and emotional effusions.

Throughout his life, Claude Debussy fervently believed that French composers must not imitate the dominant Austro-German musical styles of the 19th century, but must instead emphasize French aesthetics in their music. In the wake of World War I, he became even more passionate on the subject. While creating this Sonata, he wrote to a friend that he was composing “not so much for my own sake as to prove, in a small way, that not 30 million Boches [Germans] could destroy French thought.”

For nearly a year after the war’s outbreak, a deeply depressed Debussy was not able to compose anything at all. Only when he left Paris in July 1915 for a seaside vacation in Pourville on the Normandy coast did his creativity flow again. Musing about the great 18th-century French composers, especially Couperin and Rameau whom he had always admired, he sought to recapture the elegance and clarity of their chamber music but in his own distinctive voice. Debussy decided to compose a set of six sonatas for various instruments in the spirit of his predecessors, though his failing health (he had as yet undiagnosed cancer) stopped his production at three: the Sonata for Cello and Piano and the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (both written in 1915) and the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1917). Emphasizing his national pride, he signed them all: “Claude Debussy, musicien Français.”

Composed rapidly over a short period in July/August 1915, the Cello Sonata was the first to be completed. Finally freed from his creative block by his lovely surroundings — a charming villa surrounded by gardens and overlooking the Atlantic — Debussy wrote with joy — and perhaps a sixth sense that his days were numbered. “Now I have been writing like a madman, or one who has to die next morning,” he told a friend. Though the Sonata was conceived as abstract music, he briefly thought of giving it the subtitle “Pierrot fâché avec la lune” (“Pierrot Angry with the Moon”), linking it to the Italian commedia dell’arte clowns who had haunted many of his earlier songs and piano pieces. And indeed the emotional tone of this Sonata is an unusual (but not for this composer) mixture of ironic humor and melancholy.

The Sonata opens with a slow-tempo Prologue of extreme reticence. Its boldest music comes at the very beginning as the piano swings open the portal with grand Baroque-style gestures that the cello enhances with its florid ornaments. Then the cello sings the Sonata’s motto theme, which will return in the other two movements; its downward moans and melancholy disposition will shape the rest of this music of sighs and whispers, which eventually dies away on high, frail cello harmonics.

The second-movement Sérénade, marked “fantasque et léger” (“fantastic and light”), features various timbral experiments for the cello, which much of the time is plucked like a giant guitar or mandolin. With these technical experiments, its emphasis on clattering repeated notes, and its cool, ironic tone, this music sounds very modern, suggesting composers far in the future. Near the end, we again hear the sighing motto theme from the first movement played in the cello’s fluty high register.

The Sérénade links directly to the Finale, marked “léger et nerveux” (“light and nervous”). Here the brilliant piano part, evoking the Spanish dance idiom Debussy loved so much, challenges the wide-ranging cello part for supremacy. A slower, moody central section, marked “con morbidezza” (“with softness”), provides fine contrast. In the race to the finish, we hear in the cello a fleet reminiscence of the sighing motto theme as well as the Sonata’s opening Baroque gestures. Then Debussy wraps up his “anti-Sonata” with a series of sharp, brittle chords.

                                                                                    Notes by Janet E. Bedell, Copyright 2007

The year 1849 was one of the most fruitful of Robert Schumann’s career. Over its course, he created more than forty works in a broad range of musical categories—all this despite the fact that revolutions were convulsing central Europe throughout 1848–49, finally reaching his home city of Dresden that May and forcing the Schumann family to take temporary flight.

However, in February things were still peaceful in Dresden, and Schumann was absorbed in creating works of chamber music in the Hausmusik (“house music”) category—music that cultivated amateurs could perform at home en famille. This was a very popular genre in 19th-century Germany, where virtually every middle-class parlor had a piano, and music-making around it was one of the activities that bound families together. (Schumann’s own household was a busy one at this time, with wife Clara, five children, and a sixth on the way.) The composer originally wrote the Adagio and Allegro—one of his little masterpieces—for horn and piano, but to make the work more adaptable for home use, he specified that cello or violin could be substituted for the horn. However, it would be a most unusually talented amateur on either horn or cello who could master the technical challenges of the hurtling Allegro section!

The opening Adagio (originally titled “Romanza”) is a bit more easy to tackle, a gentle, expansive song of great expressiveness and beauty in A-flat Major. Cellist David Finckel writes, “The Adagio is one of the most romantic partnerships between two instruments imaginable. For 41 bars, the cello and piano exchange melody in a practically unbroken phrase. It is a lovers’ conversation, sometimes complementing, interrupting, questioning, but in the end finally uniting … in a calm A-flat Major. . . . The coda has a radiance and peace not heard before, and the lovers soon drift off to sleep.”

Finckel continues, “The atmosphere is unexpectedly shattered by the Allegro, which begins as though shot from a gun.” This is the impetuous refrain theme in rollicking quick notes, which will return three more times to bind together the sprawling rondo form. The first of its episodes—passionately yearning in a troubled minor key—also returns near the end. In a slower tempo and a distant key, the central episode provides a brief oasis of serenity in this music of tremendous forward momentum.

Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012

Once he’d become affluent, Johannes Brahms did most of his composing during the summer months, selecting various European beauty spots to inspire him. During the summer of 1886, he was living in the attractive alpine town of Hofstetten in Switzerland in a villa overlooking mountain-ringed Lake Thun. It was a happy location for him because his close friends the Widmanns (he adored Frau Widmann’s plum cake) were nearby, and his current love the contralto Hermine Spiess also came to visit. And in this ideal situation, his creativity flourished, yielding three of his finest chamber works—the magnificent Third Piano Trio, the songful Second Violin Sonata, and the Second Cello Sonata in F Major, one of the greatest works for this instrument.

The First Cello Sonata in E Minor of 1862/1865 with its cornucopia of warm, lyrical Brahmsian melodies is the most often performed of the two. Not trying so hard to please, the Second is more dramatic, more serious, and more musically ambitious. It is also far more difficult to play for both cellist and pianist. Brahms makes more use of the cello’s challenging high register in this sonata as well as special techniques such as tremolo and different kinds of pizzicato. The piano part is extremely full-toned and elaborate—on a par with the ferocious piano part in Brahms’ F-Minor Piano Quintet. The cellist must fight not to be overwhelmed by the massive sounds coming from his partner. Brahms wrote this part for Robert Hausmann, also the inspiration for his Double Concerto; Hausmann was renowned for the exceptional power and radiance of his tone and reportedly could easily hold his own against a keyboard fortissimo. Hausmann and Brahms gave the Sonata’s first public performance in Vienna on November 24, 1886.

The Allegro vivace first movement in sonata form explodes into action as the pianist launches a big tremolo figure which will permeate this music. Against this, the cello attacks a vehement theme of choppy, brief phrases dramatically leaping up and down. Eventually, the piano moves on to a new theme, heroic and ringing in thick chords and octaves and ornamented with triplet rhythms. The cello takes-up this theme as well and then adopts the piano’s opening tremolos as a muttering accompaniment to the piano’s wide-ranging chords.

This exposition is repeated before Brahms moves on to a wondrous development section that returns to the jagged principal theme in the cello over the piano tremolo but then transforms this stormy idea into a dreaming fantasy of murmuring cello tremolo and an ethereal version of the theme in soft piano chords. Here, too, he touches for the first time on the key of F-sharp Major—only a half step away from the home key of F Major but light years away harmonically. After a quite regular recapitulation of the exposition music, Brahms appends a lovely, smiling coda using a gentler variant of the principal theme.

Now exploring more deeply the distant land of F-sharp Major first glimpsed in the development section, the Adagio affettuoso slow movement is the soul of this sonata. Without any histrionics or self pity, it sings a subtly colored lament for things lost or never to be won. The piano begins the contemplative main theme while the cello plucks a delicate pizzicato accompaniment. However, this is an idea that really needs the cello’s plangent singing voice, and rising steadily into its high alto range, the cello makes this melody blossom. Throughout the movement, the cellist is also asked to make extensive use of pizzicato, sometimes achieving a Bartók-like force. The movement’s middle section makes another quantum leap tonally to the key of F Minor.   

F Minor now becomes the key of the Scherzo third movement, a fierce dance in a hurtling 6/8 meter that Brahms enlivens with conflicting cross rhythms. The piano part is especially virtuosic, and the cellist has his work cut-out to survive against it. By contrast, the cellist eloquently dominates the gentler trio section in F Major with its beautifully melancholic melody line.

After these three substantial and serious movements, Brahms takes a page out of his recent Second Piano Concerto and creates a finale that is totally light-hearted and conflict-free. In rondo form, its recurring refrain is a delightfully optimistic tune with a strong folk flavor. The piano writing sparkles, and the cello—no longer trying to compete—is allowed to relax and sing effortlessly.

Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012