Razumovsky and Schuppanzigh remained important professional contacts for Beethoven throughout the next decade. It was with understandable distress, therefore, that Beethoven learned of the terrible fire that nearly destroyed Razumovsky’s palace in December of 1814. The tragedy further strained the Count, whose health and vision were already beginning to fail, forcing him to dismiss his household quartet. In the following spring, the quartet’s cellist, Joseph Linke, was taken into the employ of Countess Marie von Erdödy, another important patron who had frequently acted as Beethoven’s advisor in personal and financial matters. Beethoven was a great respecter of Linke’s talent, and he composed his last two Cello Sonatas for him during the summer of 1815; they were performed soon thereafter at the Erdödy household. The Sonatas were published by N. Simrock two years later as Beethoven’s Op. 102.

Though 1814 was one of the most successful years of Beethoven’s life as a public figure—the revival of Fidelio was a resounding success, his occasional pieces for concerts given in association with the Congress of Vienna that year were applauded by some of Europe’s noblest personages, the clangorous Wellington’s Victory became an overnight hit—he produced little in the way of important new compositions during that time. For the year 1815, the composer’s biographer Thayer listed only some vocal settings, a couple of canons, the little-known overture Namensfeier, and the two Op. 102 Sonatas for Cello. Those years of near creative silence marked a turning point in Beethoven’s compositional career, one whose outcome was the incomparable series of towering masterworks written during his last decade.

The Cello Sonatas, which formed the gateway to that remarkable period of renewal and discovery, were little understood when they premiered. “Eccentric,” “unusual,” and “peculiar” commented the reviewers of the day, criticizing the works for exactly the qualities that now serve as their greatest distinctions—seriousness of expressive purpose, harmonic originality, absolute equality of piano and cello, lack of virtuosity, and, perhaps above all, richness of contrapuntal texture. The obsession of Beethoven’s later years with the ancient techniques of fugue and imitative counterpoint finds one of its earliest realizations in the D major Cello Sonata, his last work in the form for string instrument and keyboard. Indeed, the finale in toto is a carefully worked-out and tightly packed fugal Allegro. The opening movement is remarkable for its restraint and introspection and for the masterly manner in which cello and piano are thoroughly integrated into its sonata structure. The rapt central Adagio is music of transcendent peacefulness, such as few composers have ever created. John N. Burk felt that Beethoven wrote it “in a sort of trance, as if he were listening to some mystic inner prompting,” while the composer’s amanuensis and biographer, Anton Schindler, believed that this movement and the entire Sonata were “among the richest and most sensitive inspirations in Beethoven’s music.”

Prokofiev first sketched the Cello Sonata in 1947, but the real inspiration to bring the piece to fruition came when he met the 22-year-old Mstislav Rostropovich two years later. By argument and example, Rostropovich convinced him of the cello’s potential as a solo instrument, and Prokofiev brought the Sonata to completion during the spring of 1949. At the insistence of Rostropovich a year later, Prokofiev undertook the re-composition of his 1933 Cello Concerto to produce the superb Sinfonia Concertante. As further testimony to the influence of Rostropovich, Prokofiev worked during his last years on a Concertino for Cello and Orchestra (Op. 132) and a Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello (Op. 134), but left both unfinished at his death. (The cellist also persuaded Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten to write important compositions for his instrument. “Rostropovich got his works by bullying me,” Britten confessed.) The Cello Sonata was first performed by Rostropovich and pianist Sviatoslav Richter at a private concert of the Composers’ Union in Moscow on December 6, 1949. The same principals gave the public premiere the following March at the Moscow Conservatory, and the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky noted in his diary the next day, “Rostropovich and Richter gave a public performance of Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata—an amazing, first-class work.”

The Cello Sonata is gracious, subdued, and unaffected throughout, filled with an abundance of lovely themes whose open-faced simplicity and expressive immediacy are almost folk-like in character. The opening movement is a traditional sonata structure built from three themes: a principal melody presented in the lowest register of the cello, an elegant strain of wider range and flowing mien, and a quicker dancing phrase whose energy is constrained until its return in the brilliant closing pages of the movement. The second movement is a puckish scherzo on a delightful, tripping theme; the contrasting middle section is reminiscent of the passionate love music from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet in its tender lyricism. The finale, yet another essay in Prokofiev’s richest melodic vein, is brought to a conclusion by an optimistic transformation of the opening theme, accompanied by sweeping scales and solid, simple harmonies.

The first work to be completed under this scheme, during the spring of 1883, was the Sonata for Cello and Piano in A minor, Op. 36. The second piano concerto, much to the principals’ regret, never did take wing (“Pegasus won’t budge,” lamented the composer after being unable to get beyond a few sketches), but Grieg did turn out a set of Lyric Pieces for piano almost annually, whose popularity made his name well known on both sides of the Atlantic. The Cello Sonata premiered in Leipzig on October 27, 1883, during Grieg’s tour through Germany and Holland; the composer was the pianist, and Julius Klengel, Grieg’s teacher at the Leipzig Conservatory, served as his partner. He dedicated the score to his brother John, a cellist.

Grieg, whose muse favored the miniature rather than the mighty, produced only a handful of full-length concert works: the Piano Concerto; an early Piano Sonata; an unpublished Symphony (recorded several times in recent years, however, more than a century after Grieg disowned it in 1867 and forbade its performance); and five chamber pieces, including the String Quartet, three Violin Sonatas and the Cello Sonata. The A minor Cello Sonata follows the Classical models through its three movements, though Grieg often utilized elements of the Norwegian folk music that so heavily influenced his smaller compositions.

The work’s opening, sonata-form movement is built from two sharply contrasting motives: an agitated initial melody and a complementary, major-tonality strain of subdued rhythmic motion and hymnal demeanor. The central section of the movement, almost Franckian in its earnest harmonic peregrinations, largely treats the second theme. An arpeggiated cadenza leads to the recapitulation of the earlier melodic material, which is followed by a dashing coda spun from the main theme. The Andante is disposed in a three-part form that begins with a solemn melody closely resembling the theme of the “Homage March” Grieg had composed for the incidental music to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s drama Sigurd Jorsalfar. The movement rises to a climax of great passion in its central section before quieting for the return of the opening theme. The finale opens with a brief, unaccompanied recitative that is recalled later in the movement. The theme of this closing movement, built from the simplest intervals, is dance-like and folkish in nature; the same melody at half-speed also serves as the second theme. Following an extended development section, the introductory recitative, now softly accompanied, leads directly into the recapitulation. A brilliant coda, into which is incorporated the recitative, brings this richly melodic work to a close.