Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 04/03/2010, uploaded on 07/20/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sonata in A minor for Piano and Arpeggione, D 812      Franz Schubert

I. Allegro Moderato; II. Adagio; III.  Allegretto

Franz Schubert's masterpiece gift to the cello-piano duo repertoire, the Sonata in A minor, is balanced in its formidable technical demands by its musical rewards.  When Schubert composed the piece in November 1824 for the arpeggione, an obscure member of the violin family that in many ways resembles a bowed guitar with six strings, the instrument had been invented only seven years earlier.  The breadth of the first movement is balanced by the second and third movements, which are connected by a soaring cello cadenza.  Close study of the Sonata reveals a persistent motive linking the pitches E-F-E that appears at the top of the first ascending scale for both instruments.  It unifies the movements and affects the musical structure at many levels.

This performance preserves the original pitch level of the arpeggione part for all passages, after the autograph manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.   

Noah Turner Rogoff

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.