Cello Sonata in A, Op. 69

Of Beethoven’s five Sonatas for Cello and Piano, only the A-Major Sonata was written without a companion. In addition to the Sonatas Op. 102 (from 1815) just heard, there are two early Sonatas Op. 5 that Beethoven composed while on a concert tour to Berlin and Prague in 1796. That leaves the A-Major Sonata which took shape between 1807 and early 1808. Students of Beethoven will note that it is thus contemporaneous with several monumental works, including the three Rasumovsky String Quartets, the D-Major Violin Concerto, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. He was writing at the pinnacle of his “heroic” middle period, full of taut motivic development, lyrical effusions, and dramatic power that redefined the narrative arc of instrumental music.
The Cello Sonata in A Major, Op. 69, benefits from the effort expended by Beethoven on these famous large-scale works. It opens with a singing theme in solo cello—in itself a striking detail within the genre of duo sonatas. Beethoven was making a point, pushing for a fairer power sharing relationship between the sustained string sound and the percussive, non-sustaining timbre of the piano. As Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood has shown, the composer’s autograph for this movement shows innumerable revisions that all help delineate the contrasting timbres. Within a moment, the solo cello theme is answered by the piano and just as quickly eschewed by a minor-mode transitional theme marked by the Fifth Symphony’s iconic “fate” rhythm. The evolving process spills over into the second theme, which inverts the initial rising 5th interval to a falling gesture. Against that falling arpeggio, first played in the piano, Beethoven counterpoints a nearly three-octave rising scale. Thus even before the development section itself, we have been treated to motivic linkage and transformation, change of mode, and textural contrasts—all basic developmental tactics.
The ensuing Scherzo takes its m.o. from syncopation, i.e., the placement of accented notes on metrically weak beats. After the syncopated main theme, Beethoven embeds a contrasting episode in A major. Here chordal 6ths, the major mode, and pedal tones in the bass help suggest a bit of pastoral musings. For the next four minutes Beethoven plays back and forth between these moods—between action and reflection, between the stop-and-start allure of syncopation and the lilting charm of the swaying pastoral topic.
What appears to be a full-blown slow movement turns out to be simply an extended slow introduction to the Allegro finale. At first blush, of course, we cannot know this. And Beethoven plays on our lack of clairvoyance by setting out the Adagio in captivatingly broad phrases, with a true cantabile duet between cello and piano. In its second occurrence, the song hesitates for a moment, however, and a sustained dominant 7th chord opens a door to the finale.
The finale projects boisterous good cheer. Set as a traditional sonata form (with exposition, development, and recapitulation), Beethoven appends a lengthy and important coda near the end. But first he takes great care to strike a balance between the singing cello and percussive, rhythmic piano textures. There are numerous passages of sparkling 16th notes, primarily in the keyboard. Through subtle thinning of the harmony, Beethoven never obscures the cello’s contribution. The development rides the five-note main theme into various keys before emerging into a radiant, unexpected C major (the key of the flat mediant). Possibly more striking is what happens during the coda. With the rhythmic energy pushing toward an inexorable conclusion, Beethoven pulls back on the throttle. He hovers on a cadential “six-four” harmony, the traditional launching pad for a solo cadenza in the classical concerto. But this is no cadenza; the cello is not granted a lengthy soliloquy. Instead we step into a musical parenthesis, a momentary aside that serves only to amplify and comment upon what has been heard. Beethoven revisits the main theme one last time before reinitiating the final move toward closure. It’s a strategy he used to great effect in many middle-period works. Even in an intimate chamber composition like this Cello Sonata, it yields little to its more grandiose symphonic cousins.

(c) Jason Stell