Romantic Cello Recital

Dmitry Kouzov, cello
Yulia Fedoseeva, piano

Saturday, March 21, 2020
5:00 PM
APOLLO FESTIVAL HALL

Program Notes

by Ruth Atkins

Beethoven
Twelve Variations on a Theme by Mozart "Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen"

From his earliest days in Bonn, Beethoven had hoped to travel to Vienna to take lessons with Mozart. Mozart agreed to take Beethoven as a student but due to various forces of circumstance, the lessons never took place. These variations probably composed in 1798, reflect Beethoven’s great admiration for Mozart, his opera Die Zauberflöte, and his sympathetic treatment of the characters it presents.

Mozart captures the winning simplicity of Papageno’s rustic character in a theme harmonized, like much folk music, with two chords only. Beethoven eagerly takes the mantle of caricaturist one step further in a series of clever, one-dimensional sketches, where protean changes of costume and mood are created solely by means of melodic and textural invention, without the pedigree of counterpoint.

The first variation belongs to the piano alone, but its fragmented two-note sorties render the theme almost unrecognizable. Thus, when the cello is permitted entry in Variation 2, it is obliged, like a reproving elder sibling, to play the tune “correctly” in order to re-orient the listener’s ear.

In the ensuing variations the unforgettable theme is shown from new angles refracted into different hues. When the music appears twice in the minor key- a virtual requirement of the variation genre - the tone becomes more ruminative. Despite the jovial bravura of the concluding variation, the listener is left with a cheerful but at the same time reflective state.

Brahms
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in e minor, op. 38

Allegro non troppo in e minor
Allegretto quasi Menuetto in f# minor
Allegro in e minor

The Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano is Brahms's first surviving duo-sonata. His previous sonata had been the Third Piano Sonata, Op 5, a work of tempestuous youth, written in 1853 and prefaced by a quotation from a verse of Romantic poetry. The cello sonata, begun in 1862 when Brahms was not yet thirty, was completed only in 1865 when two remaining movements were added to the first, and a previously composed Adagio was deleted. Brahms developed at an early age a severe internal critic, and, one imagines, for better or for worse, much of what passed under its eye is now lost to us. However, there is reasonable expectation that this Adagio may have remained and been renamed, perhaps published as an independent movement. Be that as it may, with op. 38 in its completed form, Brahms turned a corner. Firmly grounded in the classical tradition, the work pays respect to the legacy he inherited, and carries it forward.

Beginning with the first movement, the structure is in classical sonata-allegro form, comprising two contrasting themes, development and recapitulation. The wide sweep of melodic lines and harmonic space, however, are Romantic. Moreover, to complete a thorough homage to German musical genius, the first theme is inspired by a motif in Contrapunctus 3 from Bach’s Art of the Fugue. Throughout, the relationship between the two instruments is balanced, though distinct. The second movement’s Minuet and Trio - which replaces the usual Adagio - is a tribute to the Viennese classicism of Beethoven, or Schubert.

The timbre of the minuet with its staccato regular rhythms is restrained, with the encompassed trio breathing a greater breadth of expressivity: long phrases and greater dynamic variation.

The final movement is Brahms’s foray into stricter counterpoint, using again and more obviously, a motif from the Art of the Fugue (Contrapunctus 13). The fugue material resists more than a tip of the hat to the Baroque, however, as it is poised within an overarching sonata form. The furious piano part requires agility, speed and weight, especially in the treacherous slalom of the finale’s main fugue sections, and an encompassing mastery of technique is indispensable to the cellist.

Beethoven
Sonata Op. 102, # 1 in C Major

Andante
Allegro vivace Adagio
Tempo d'andante
Allegro vivace

Composed in 1815, the C major Sonata consists of two rapid movements, each preceded by an introspective introduction. The dialectic between the instruments is far more concentrated than in the earlier sonatas for cello – Beethoven has by now moved away from the expansiveness of his middle period, and gained an imaginative freedom in his tonal and rhythmic structures which will characterize the mystical late piano sonatas and string quartets.

Both movements follow the convention of a slow introduction, but with liberties.

The introductory “prelude” to the first movement lacks the ceremonial formality of a conventional introduction, and establishes an emotional world instead with a simple repeated elegiac theme. It concludes with an elaborate cadence in C major and is then silenced by a vigorous theme in the minor announcing the sonata section.

The second movement opens more traditionally and eventually leads to a sonata-allegro portion that obligingly resolves in the correct key, but only after a wild development and a complex, almost ecstatic final variation. Perhaps as Emily Dickinson declared, “Much madness is divinest sense.”