Debussy: Cello Sonata

So, lately I was listening to de Falla's Canciones Espanoles in the version for cello and piano. On the Brilliant CD (with Rosler on cello and Würtz on piano) this is followed by Claude Debussy's Cello Sonata.  I hadn't heard this work before. But it was immediately clear what a brilliant, monumental composition this is. Much more substantial, it seemed to me, than the de Falla (although after hearing the version with voice and piano I have adjusted my assessment of the songs). Anyway, the sonata strikes me as an amazing work. It oozes confidence and effortless mastery over the musical medium. It is complex, dense, layered, emotionally ambiguous, classically proportioned, muscular, sharply contoured. This seems to be the work of a composer at the height of his powers. The sharp contours do surprise, particularly in the case of Debussy who made musical sfumato his trademark. But this is a work from the very final years of his life (1915) in which he was apparently moving in the direction of a more limpid neoclassicism. Also the confidence and manliness astound as the composer was already suffering from the cancer that would take his life only a few years later (in 1918). On the other hand, the 1914 German attack on France seemed to have fueled a nationalistic reflex in Debussy.

The work comes in three short movements, and is altogether merely a good ten minutes long. Another proof of the fact that stature does not at all have to be correlated with duration. One does not need one of Mahler's or Bruckner's 'symphonische Riesenschlänge' to be transported to a different world. The first movement - Prologue - seems to mix two contrasting themes: a baroque flourish (paying hommage to Couperin as icon of French culture in defiance of the aggression of the 'Boches') and a wistful, romantic theme. I'd be surprised if we were dealing here with a conventional sonata form but the music seems to be built up from clearly identifiable cells anyhow. Some commentators see in the contrast between these two themes a corroboration for an unpublished programme of the sonata that centers on the figure of a Pierrot (allegedly, Debussy first wanted to title the sonata as 'Pierrot fait fou avec la Lune'). The second movement, Sérénade, has a more playful mien because of the pronounced pizzicato character. But the abruptness and metric irregularity of the music betrays a barely concealed seriousness, however. The final movement thematically connects to the preceding and sounds like an impetuous Spanish jota, with the piano occasionally strumming like a guitar and the cello ringing out in cante jondo fashion.

The performance by Timora Rosler and Klara Würtz strikes me as very accomplished. A great find.