About this Piece

In the second half of the 1830s, Felix Mendelssohn found himself stretched by his many musical responsibilities. He took his groundbreaking 1836 oratorio St. Paul on tour, effectively reviving the presentation of large-scale narrative works that married the sacred and secular. He performed at festivals throughout Germany and served as the director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. He also curated a series of “historical concerts” focused on music of the past by the likes of J.S. Bach and Beethoven, a novel programming strategy for that era. In October 1837, his brother Paul, a banker and skilled amateur cellist, complained of being anxious in his free time, and Felix wrote back expressing ambivalence about success and always being busy: “The more I find what are termed encouragement and recognition in my vocation, the more restless and unsettled does it become in my hands, and I cannot deny that I often long for that rest of which you complain…. It seems, however, that this is not to be, and I should be ungrateful were I dissatisfied with my life as it is.” 

In that same letter, Felix made a promise to Paul, perhaps hoping to give him something to look forward to in his restlessness: “I also intend soon to compose a sonata for cello and piano for you—by my beard, I will!” Back in 1829, Felix had written Paul some variations for cello and piano, but the three-movement Sonata in B-flat major he completed in 1838 represented an altogether more ambitious proposition. Like the variations, this new piece was much indebted to the sonatas and short works written by Beethoven for these instruments. But Mendelssohn combined the sense of strict structure and rhythm we find in Beethoven’s music with an intuition for the cello’s singing capabilities. The result was heartwarming, witty, and uplifting—surely a boon to Paul’s spirits. 

The Cello Sonata in B-flat major starts with a long line played in octaves between the cello and both hands of the keyboard. It is almost austere in its purity, more like a reservoir of intervals than a true melody. At the end of the string of notes, the piano plays a little rhythmic hook, a snappy, dotted figure. From this playful hint, Mendelssohn builds the ebullient first movement of his sonata. The Andante is a graceful, minor-key dance based on that same dotted figure. For the finale, Mendelssohn returns to the austere shape from the opening of the piece, but he harmonizes it and gives it a new rhythmic character so that it becomes a sweet, nostalgic ditty. We hear this melody again and again over the course of the movement, as if the entire work has served to prepare the listener for this tune, before the music subsides in quiet cascades in the piano. —Nicky Swett