Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 07/01/2015, uploaded on 04/01/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Robert Schumann’s popular Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70 (1849) was originally conceived as a work for horn and piano. It was Schumann’s answer to the advances made years earlier in the development of the Ventilhorn, or valve horn, which, unlike the horn known to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, allowed the playing of more exact pitches and precise half-steps. The Adagio begins with an earnest, plaintive musical entreaty drawn out gently by the cello and answered by the piano. This opening theme gradually builds upon itself, undergoes several harmonic modulations, then quietly retreats from its anxious crest to a restful, resigned close. The pensive mood of the Adagio is readily cast off by the boisterous Allegro, with its sudden rise in dynamic and its explosions of triplets in both the cello and piano parts. The wistful melodies of the Adagio give way to the mature and tempestuous themes of the Allegro. The quieter, more introspective moments recall some of the Adagio’s rhythmic and melodic ideas before the piece rushes to an exuberant close.                                                                                                 Notes by J. Anthony McAlister

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.