7 mins
BEETHOVEN CELLO SONATA NO.5, SECOND AND THIRD MOVEMENTS
Cellist Gary Hoffman considers the importance of context to understand and appreciate this work, written in 1815 during a period of isolation and difficulty for the composer
From Beethoven Cello Sonata no.5 in D major op.102 no.2. Urtext edition with marked and unmarked string parts. Ed. Jens Dufner. Pf fingering Ian Fountain. Vcl fingering and bowing David Geringas. Order no. HN 1475. ISMN 979-0-2018-1475-9. €9.00. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, München © 2020
Playing this sonata as part of the collection of Beethoven’s five for cello and piano, in concerts over many years, has given me a sense of what it meant to Beethoven. His Fourth and Fifth cello sonatas are often regarded as difficult to interpret because of their complexity and an introspective quality, but as part of his journey in writing for cello and piano they represent a definitive conclusion to his mastery of the genre.
I’m convinced Beethoven would not have thought when writing the first sonatas in 1796 that a fugue with cello and piano were possible. And neither did he appear to consider exploiting the singing nature of the cello in a slow movement. But in the Third Sonata we can hear he is conceiving the ways in which these two instruments can function happily together in a certain world of sonorities, and he continues to develop his compositional ambition for the combination, apparently recognising the need to write a whole slow movement and a fugue as his final contribution to the genre.
Choices and interpretation
Coming to learn this piece, one would expect to have played at least Beethoven’s Third Sonata and to have immersed oneself in fugues from his contemporaneous piano sonatas and the late string quartets, so that the choices of bow stroke, bowing and phrasing, vibrato and fingering would not be arbitrary but would serve one’s best understanding of the music. It’s not that we have to make a choice one way and live with it. In fact, I find it more authentic to leave bowing and fingering choices to suit the moment, i.e. the performance space, the audience and how I feel, hence playing from an unmarked part. The crucial thing is to have an awareness of how your part fits within the whole.
THE SOLOIST
NAME GARY HOFFMAN
NATIONALITY AMERICAN
STUDIED WITH RUDOLF KOELMAN
RECORDS FOR HÄNSSLER CLASSIC, ORCHID CLASSICS
‘It’s not about passing ideas back and forth but about everything constantly developing’
Gary Hoffman and David Selig will be performing the complete cello sonatas by Beethoven on 1 and 2 June in Madrid. Their recording of Beethoven’s Complete Sonatas and Variations for cello and piano has recently been released on La Dolce Volta and is available on all good streaming platforms.
BERNARD MARTINEZ
Austere beginnings
At the beginning, for example, although we are playing the top line in the chorale, ours is only one voice out of three or four and so we have to be aware of how much vibrato we use, if any, so that the cello sounds as one with the piano rather than drawing attention to itself. There’s also a certain hush to these bars – I picture monks walking through an abbey – which perfectly sets up the more outwardly expressive theme from bar 9, for which there can be a distinct change in vibrato.
Morphing and evolving
It’s interesting in bar 13 that Beethoven has the cello take up an accompanying idea from the piano part in the preceding lyrical phrase and uses it to ‘commentate’ on the chorale in the piano. This idea is in turn adopted in the right hand of the piano as a commentary on the chorale from bar 20, and what started as an ostinato figure has taken on a different role. All of this creates a constantly morphing musical progression. It’s not about passing ideas back and forth but about everything constantly developing.
Hope and despair
At the change of key from minor to major into bar 25 and vice versa at bar 51 it is tempting to let the tempo move on, but to me that kind of change is disturbing. If you alter the tempo you alter something fundamental. It’s like looking at the same scene but in a different mood. One moment the sun may come out, in another there’s a chill wind but what is underneath doesn’t actually change. The tempo is the unifying factor throughout the movement and Beethoven has gone to great lengths to write that kind of motion, fluidity or change of character into the music.
Heavenly music
The espressivo marking of the music from bar 29 is more to reflect its inherent nature than a direction for the performer to play in any exaggerated way. Beethoven has already created the context within which this section sits with the severe, grave quality of the opening and it’s clear to me that here, the music breaks free of that. It’s possibly the place where we reach the greatest levels of nuance and dynamic change, but it has always fascinated me that there is not one marking above piano either here or in the rest of the movement. While there are crescendos and espressivos marked, the soft dynamics and lack of resultant dynamics reflect the introspective conception of the piece. The music never completely opens out and to my mind it is for us to reach ‘upwards’ rather than outwards here and in similar places like bar 70.
With the return to the minor in bar 51 comes the restatement of the chorale theme in the piano while the cello adapts the ostinato figure from bar 13 to make its commentary out of these dotted figures. And in bar 59 the restatement of the espressivo theme from bar 7 is this time accompanied by both the dotted figures and the off-beat triplets ( ) that develop from bar 42. Continually developing, it builds to a point of culmination and what follows from bar 67 is like a vision of something beyond our existence. Bars 67 and 68 are one place where the phrase mark works directly as a bowing, making one long bow over two bars. There need not be anything active in our playing: it should sound astonishingly different.
Transitional ambiguity
The music only reanimates itself in the Allegro where, although it effectively resolves to D major, the four-bar section raises more questions than it answers and seems to me to be part of the transition that began at the end of the slow movement. We hear the cello and piano passing a thematic idea between them but we don’t yet know it is going to be a fugue, and as listeners we don’t even know whether it’s in three time or four time. Beethoven only marks Allegro fugato when it seems that the ambiguity is resolved, and it becomes clear that the music from bar 5 is the subject of a fugue that will now surely follow.
Articulation and interplay
Different editions will make different assumptions based on an autograph, which presumably does not contain all the intended articulation marks. So, as performers we have to make our own judgements, bearing in mind that this edition records as accurately as possible what is in the autograph, with editorial suggestions kept to a minimum on the music. The staccatissimo (wedge) markings are part of the character throughout the fugue but the fact that they are marked on every quaver (e) in bar 35 but not in bar 5, for example, indicates Beethoven intended there to be a difference.
Whatever bow strokes and articulation we choose, we must always be cognisant of the interplay with the piano, especially the frequent dialogue with its left hand. After all, we only have one voice so most of the fugue is happening elsewhere. We have to hear it, feel it and be inside it, and aspects such as articulation and colour must be in the piano’s world as much as the cello’s. Amid the intricate counterpoint, places such as bars 67–72 where cello and piano move together in rhythmic unison are particularly interesting, and because he marked sforzandos Beethoven meant them to be highlighted.
If the music starts to dissipate from bar 90 to the most delicate statement of the subject from bar 102 then it gathers energy again from bar 114 until it is spent and has to give way to something new in bar 143.
Music from the moon
This music that sounds like it came from the moon provokes the wrapping-up of all that came before. I imagine, although I am not suggesting Beethoven was consciously stating this, that it concludes all that came since his First Cello Sonata. He goes through a huge evolutionary process in these five sonatas: the aspect of how to treat the cello, how to treat cello and piano together, and how to put the two instruments in the same world so that what they can express as an entity goes far beyond the notion of each individual instrument. That he reverts back to an early form, the fugue, to finish it all is a fitting signal of his final years. It is as if his whole life is represented in this collection of works.
INTERVIEW BY HELENA RUINARD