Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 02/10/2016, uploaded on 08/30/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In his later years, Claude Debussy planned a series of six chamber sonatas under the title Six sonates pour divers instruments.Only three of the planned works, however, materialized—the two solo sonatas for violin and cello, and the chamber sonata for flute, viola and harp. Each is a testament to Debussy’s skill in the realm of chamber music, but also examples of the composer’s gradual progression toward absolute music and abandonment of the overtly visual and textual elements that had dominated nearly all of his earlier music.

First to be composed was the Cello Sonata in D minor, completed in 1815. Possessing a severe brevity (most performances last only eleven minutes), it is nonetheless filled to the brim with material. The sonata is structured in three movements, though the last two are played without break, but it is not to the familiar Classical sonata structure the Debussy turned for inspiration. Instead, Debussy adopted a plan inspired by the music of an even earlier period, namely that of François Couperin. Mixed with this Baroque influence, however, is Debussy’s modern compositional language of modes, whole-tone and pentatonic scales, and advanced techniques required of the soloist.

The opening Prologue begins with a declamatory statement of the movement’s principal theme in the piano answered, in turn, by a flourish from the cello. Much of the cello’s part is highly ornamental with the piano mostly resigned to harmonic support. This changes, however, in the movement’s central episode as the serene and lyrical music gives way to an animated ostinato in the cello and the piano takes on a somewhat more melodically important role. The peaceful music of the opening returns to round out the movement’s ternary design and closes with quiet harmonics from the cello. The ensuing Sérénade is an unusual movement with a majority of the solo part played pizzicato. Save for a few arco passages in the opening section, only the middle episode features any prominent use of the bow. A truncated reprise of the opening gives way to a bowed passage that serves as a transition to the sonata’s finale. An energetic movement, the finale is not without its moments of tender beauty and much of it is indeed lyrical.       Joseph DuBose

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Cello Sonata in D minor        Claude Debussy

The Cello Sonata demonstrates an economy of language characteristic of the composer’s mature style. The Prologue opens with a resolute gesture in the piano, solidly in the key of D minor, but this conventional harmony yields almost immediately to more mysterious, Impressionistic sounds, sung in the cello’s upper register. The development section continues to defy Classical harmony, mixing major and minor tonalities. The bold opening measures of the animated Sérénade lean even further towards atonality. After a static and suspenseful passage, marked by a bowed return to the opening guitar-like theme, the music launches attacca into the lively finale. The cello soars again in its expressive upper register, then launches into a jaunty melody. The movement features two notably distinct interludes—in the first, the piano offers a lyrical melody in high octaves, again evoking an exotic Spanish flavor, the cello appropriately accompanying with strumming pizzicati. Recalling with a vengeance the declamatory measures of the entire sonata, Debussy returns to D minor and punctuates the work with a defiant self-assurance.     Notes by Patrick Castillo

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.