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GARY HOFFMAN 23
Was it perhaps on account of the luminous sonority of the splendid Stradivarius
played by his friend? In any case, the new work calls much more frequently on the
medium and treble of the cello to sing the melodic lines. The top register, quite
rarely solicited in the Sonata in E minor, is positively radiant here, a veritable guide
through four movements that seem to roam the alpine landscapes. For if the tone
of the E minor work was symphonic, that of its counterpart in F major evokes the
agogic freedom, the fantasy, the inventions of a serenade. Its luminous character
makes it inseparable from the other two compositions Brahms was working on
at the same time, the Violin Sonata in A major and the Piano Trio in C minor. The
three works are so perfectly matched in colours and affects that, hearing one, I
also hear the other two. Brahms later revised the Adagio affettuoso, the ‘pizzicato
movement’, in which a storm cloud seems to float by in the sultriness of a summer
afternoon, and more especially the Allegro passionato, which he made lighter and
brighter, calming its tensions.
The way lay open for the ultimate decantation of the late
opuses for piano, a poetic précis in which the feeling for
nature so present in the works written by Lake Thun was to
be sublimated, perfecting Brahms’s sonic ideal, to which the
cello had brought a new and decisive touch.