Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 5 is the second of his Opus 102 sonatas. This one is in startling contrast to the first, more traditionally structured with a fast-slow-fast sequence of independent movements.
The final movement is a fugue — Beethoven’s first full-movement fugue, what Maynard Solomon calls “the first expression of a veritable contrapuntal obsession during Beethoven’s last decade.” (Beethoven, p. 391)
#Beethoven250 Day 288
Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major (Opus 102, No. 2), 1815
A great setting for cellist Sol Gabetta with Nelson Goerner on piano.
The Cello Sonata No. 5 makes its entrance with a dramatic five-note power-punch motif that might have inspired Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.” Yet, the movement explores many different avenues of melodic expression.
The second movement of the Cello Sonata No. 5 is surprisingly the only full true slow movement in all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas. Labeled “Adagio con molto sentimento d'affetto,” it begins in D minor as a dirge with hymn-like elegance, but the D major middle blossoms into joy.
Beethoven had studied Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier since he was a kid, and by 1815, he had recently been exploring the counterpoint of Bach and Handel in more detail. It’s not surprising he would write his own fugues; also not surprising that they would be unlike anyone else’s.
The final movement of the Cello Sonata No. 5 is a double fugue. The first subject begins with an octave scale, which is introduced as a fragment first by the cello and then echoed by the piano, then in turn elaborated in its full form. This theme is later inverted. The 2nd theme is a 4-note phrase that is reminiscent of stock fugue subjects found in Bach and Handel as well as Haydn and Mozart. It's later mixed with the 1st theme, plunging gleefully into dissonances and no longer caring about fugue rules and traditions.
The authors of Beethoven’s Cello: Five Revolutionary Sonatas and Their World write of the Cello Sonata No. 5 fugue:
[T]he composer was nearly stone deaf and was virtually reduced to relying on his memory of sounding music. Nevertheless, as evidenced by many passages of this challenging movement, he remained unapologetic in writing what can only be described for the time as avant-garde music as he confronted a seemingly insurmountable paradox: how to invoke the rigor and erudition of eighteenth-century counterpoint within the context of a startlingly new, grindingly dissonant music idiom that pushed contemporary taste to the very limits of the acceptable. Put another way, Beethoven sought to balance the conflicting demands of meticulous control (fugal counterpoint) and unfettered freedom (a provocative musical language that unleashed new levels of unchecked, intensified dissonance). The result tested the limits of an austere, dignified genre, a decisive act of brinkmanship that catapulted the genre of the cello sonata into virgin, unexplored territory and left many of the composer’s contemporaries perplexed and bewildered. (p. 162)
Alas, every description of the fugal finale of the Cello Sonata No. 5 makes it sound more academic and forbidding than it really is. This is a happy joyful fugue, and if Beethoven struggled with the structure and counterpoint, it doesn’t show at all. Beethoven is having fun.
#Beethoven250 Day 288
Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major (Opus 102, No. 2), 1815
Another stunning performance by Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter.
In 1818, a reviewer wrote of the Opus 102 Cello Sonatas:
These two sonatas are surely among the most remarkable and strange piano works written in a long time, not only for this form but altogether for the pianoforte. Everything here is different, very different from what we have received up to now, even from this master. May he not take it amiss if we add: not a little of it as it stands here, in how it is arranged, in how it is laid out and distributed, seems designed so that it turned out all the more unusual and strange.
At one time, Beethoven wanted to master every type of musical composition. As the years went by, he instead began narrowing his focus. The Opus 102 Cello Sonatas are Beethoven’s final sonatas for cello and piano, but also the last of his accompanied sonatas for any instrument.