Johannes Brahms: Cello Sonatas – Matilda Colliard

Brahms’ two magnificent Cello Sonatas can rightfully be considered as the most important examples of this genre written in the second half of the nineteenth century. With his First Cello Sonata, Brahms overcame the hesitation he had nourished until then about the quality of his writing for duo. In the Second Sonata, Brahms demonstrates his confidence in the handling of orchestral colours and symphonic writing (in terms of timbre, scale of the work, and variety of the palette). Whilst the first Sonata is more concentrated and intimate, personal, and crepuscular, the second is more open, more explicit, broader and more self-confident. Brahms’ skilled scoring leads the two instrument to blend magnificently, and the cello seems to find its ideal expressive venue, while the piano appears to lose all characterizations as a “percussion” instrument and to become, in turn, a bowed instrument called to the broadest possible singing and cantabile.