Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano (2 of 2)
April 13 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT
$10.00 – $35.00
Presented in two concerts due to program length – part one is 7:00pm on Thursday 4/10/25, and part two is 7:00pm on Sunday 4/13/25.
The Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69, is the third of five cello sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed it in 1807–08, during his productive middle period. It was first performed in 1809 by cellist Nikolaus Kraft and pianist Dorothea von Ertmann, a student of Beethoven. Published by Breitkopf & Härtelthe same year, it was dedicated to Freiherr Ignaz von Gleichenstein, Beethoven’s friend and an amateur cellist. The sonata was successful with audiences from the beginning.
The Sonatas for cello and piano No. 4 in C major, Op. 102, No. 1, and No. 5 in D major, Op. 102, No. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven were composed simultaneously in 1815 and published, by Simrock, in 1817 with a dedication to the Countess Marie von Erdődy, a close friend and confidante of Beethoven.
The two sonatas were composed between May and December 1815. The first copy by Beethoven’s copyist Wenzel Rampl was made in late 1815 but was then subject to further alterations by Beethoven. A subsequent ‘good’ copy was supplied in February 1816 to Charles Neate for proposed, though unrealized, publication in London. Beethoven then made further small alterations prior to their eventual publication by Simrock in Bonn.
During the period 1812 to 1817 Beethoven, ailing and overcome by all sorts of difficulties, experienced a period of literal and figurative silence as his deafness became overwhelmingly profound and his productivity diminished. Following seven years after the A major Sonata No. 3, the complexity of their composition and their visionary character marks (which they share with the subsequently completed piano sonata Op 101) the start of Beethoven’s “third period”.
The critics of the time, often perplexed by Beethoven’s last compositions, described the sonatas in terms such as the following from the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung:
They elicit the most unexpected and unusual reactions, not only by their form but by the use of the piano as well…We have never been able to warm up to the two sonatas; but these compositions are perhaps a necessary link in the chain of Beethoven’s works in order to lead us there where the steady hand of the maestro wanted to lead us.
Although played less often than Sonata No. 3, Sonatas Nos. 4 and 5 are now essential elements in the basic repertory of works for cello and piano.