From Prague, Beethoven’s 1796 concert tour took him to Dresden, Leipzig, and then, beginning in May and lasting to July, Berlin, where he was received at the court of the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II, who had succeeded his uncle Frederick the Great in 1786.
King Friedrich Wilhelm II was a big music lover. Thayer writes: “It was he who caused the operas of Gluck and Mozart to be performed there and introduced oratorios of Handel into the court concerts.”
Friedrich Wilhelm II played the cello, and so Beethoven wrote him cello music.
While in Berlin, Beethoven essentially invented a new genre — the Cello Sonata. The cello and piano had been paired before, but usually with one instrument subservient to the other — either the cello accompanying the keyboard, or the keyboard providing harmonies for the cello.
“[T]here was no genuine precedent for Beethoven’s attack on the problem of composing a full-scale cello sonata by bringing the entire range of his piano writing into a working reciprocal relationship with the cello in its varied registers and expressive voices.” — Lewis Lockwood
King Friedrich Wilhelm II had in his court the greatest cellist of the era: Jean-Louis Duport, who before the French Revolution was a favorite among the French nobility and public alike. Voltaire told him “You know how to turn an ox [meaning the cello] into a nightingale.”
In the wake of the French Revolution, Jean-Louis Duport and his “ox” fled France and alighted in Berlin, where he met up with his older brother Jean-Pierre, who had taught cello to Friedrich Wilhelm when the king was still a prince.
When Beethoven’s first two Cello Sonatas were published as Opus 5, they were dedicated to King Friedrich Wilhelm II, but Beethoven wrote them for cellist Jean-Louis Duport, who together with Beethoven played their first performances for the king.
Beethoven’s two Opus 5 Cello Sonatas are similarly structured. Both have only two movements, but they give the impression of being big expansive works, primarily because both first movements are very long and begin with a languorous Adagio.
#Beethoven250 Day 75
Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major (Opus 5, No. 1), 1796
In a magical city, an attentive audience in a garden center listens to Beethoven played by Ella van Poucke and brother Nicolas (@NicolasPianist)