Sonata No. 2 for cello and piano

In yesterday’s notes we remarked how circumstances at Cambridge allowed Charles Villiers Stanford ample opportunity to compose choral works. The same may be said for chamber music, for soon after his arrival at Cambridge in 1887 (as professor; he had been a student there from 1870-73), Stanford joined a small circle of musicians that met regularly to play chamber works. During the next few years he produced his first two string quartets, first piano trio, and the Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, op. 39, published in 1893 (the first cello sonata was a student composition). The work shows Stanford’s maturity, especially in its ability to resist the strong influence of Johannes Brahms’ two works in the same genre. The second movement, which we will hear today, is characterized by numerous tempo changes: Stanford indicates at least six in the score. More important, perhaps, are the modal changes, e.g., switching from the world of G minor to B-flat minor and G-flat major around the middle of the movement. The latter keys are much “flatter” in the tonal spectrum, and Stanford relies on such contrasts to replace contrasts in thematic material. He opens with a fantasy-like texture redolent of Chopin (the Polonaise-fantasie comes to mind), although I find a more exact parallel with Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto no. 2 (1868), also in G minor. In addition to superficial resemblances in key and melodic contour, Saint-Saens and Stanford’s works both seem intent on suggesting improvisation, mystery, and a blossoming rhetoric of introduction.

(c) Jason Stell