Beethoven: Cello Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1 & 2 Keiran Campbell & Sezi Seskir

• 1 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, Op. 5 No. 1: I. Adagio sostenuto - Allegro 16:57
• 2 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, Op. 5 No. 1: II. Rondo. Allegro vivace 07:05
• 3 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2: I. Adagio sostenuto e espressivo - Allegro molto più tosto presto 15:11
• 4 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2: II. Rondo. Allegro 08:55
• Total Runtime 48:08

Info zu Beethoven: Cello Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1 & 2

Beethoven in Berlin: Like his flute-playing uncle Frederick the Great, King Frederick William II (r. 1786–1797) was a keen musical amateur. An avid cellist, he studied with the virtuosi Ludwig Christian Hesse, Carlo Graziani, and Jean-Pierre Duport, the latter of whom he appointed his principal cellist in 1773. He commissioned chamber music from notable composers across Europe, received the dedications of string quartets by Haydn and Mozart, and sometimes performed as a member of his own court orchestra. Months before acceding to the throne, he hired perhaps the finest cellist of his age, Luigi Boccherini, as his court composer. Boccherini served the court in absentia from Madrid, dispatching twelve new works per year to the Prussian monarch. Given the king’s insatiable appetite for cello music, it is no accident that Beethoven composed his first two sonatas for cello and piano during his brief but rewarding stay in Berlin.

Beethoven arrived in Berlin in May 1796, having departed from Vienna in February on a concert tour that took him through Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig. The tour was sponsored by Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who had taken Mozart on the same trip in 1789. Lichnowsky was a staunch supporter of Beethoven during his early years in Vienna, arranging for the performance and publication of his works and providing him lodging from 1794 to 1796. The tour proved to be a highpoint of Beethoven’s career, both socially and financially. Writing from Prague, he told his brother Johann, “I am well, very well. My art is winning me friends and renown, and what more do I want. And this time I shall make a good deal of money” (letter of 19 February 1796, quoted and trans. in Emily Anderson, The Letters of Beethoven [New York, 1961], vol. 1, 22–23).

Beethoven resided in the Prussian capital for about two months, during which time he performed repeatedly for the king, established relationships with local musicians, and composed prolifically. At the end of his stay, the king rewarded him with a gold snuffbox filled with louis d’or, and there is evidence suggesting he was invited to join the Prussian court permanently. (Any such offer was rendered null and void by the monarch’s death in 1797). Beethoven also attended meetings of Berlin’s Singakademie, a choral society devoted to the works of J. S. Bach and other masters. Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, who founded the society, reports that Beethoven improvised at two meetings, on 21 and 28 June. On the first occasion, after hearing Fasch’s setting of Psalm 119 sung by the choir, he extemporized on the theme of the final fugue.

According to his pupil Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven “composed and played the two sonatas for cello and piano, Opus 5, for Duport (the King’s first cellist) and himself” (Franz Gerhard Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, trans. Frederick Noonan [Arlington, VA, 1987], 97). The Duport to whom Ries refers is not the Jean-Pierre mentioned above but his younger brother Jean-Louis, who had taken over as principal cellist in 1789. (Jean-Pierre continued to serve the court as director of entertainments). In addition to the two sonatas, Beethoven composed two variation sets for cello and piano in Berlin, perhaps also for the younger Duport: Twelve Variations on “See, the conqu’ring hero comes” from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, WoO 45, and Twelve Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Op. 66.

Jean-Louis Duport was the most celebrated cellist in his native France in the 1780s. He fled Paris for Berlin when the Revolution set in and served the Prussian court until 1806. Like many virtuosi, he composed works for his own use, including cello concertos, sonatas, and duos. He is perhaps best known for his treatise Essai sur le doigté du violoncelle et sur la conduite de l’archet (1806), in which he lays out a technique of playing the cello that is distinct from violin-centric (or gamba-centric) approaches. In the treatise, he prizes evenness and quality of tone, advocates for the use of the Tourte bow, and urges performers to study the bow’s many possible “variations” and “accents,” so that these may be applied imaginatively in the moment (Jean-Louis Duport, Essai sur le doigté du violoncelle et sur la conduite de l’archet [Paris, 1806], 166).

As a leading proponent of the French or Viotti school of string playing, Duport had much to offer Beethoven. Indeed, it is not at all remiss to characterize the Op. 5 sonatas as collaborative works, similar to the “Kreutzer” Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 47 (1803), composed for George Bridgetower; the Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (1806), composed for Franz Clement; or, for that matter, the entire corpus of string quartets (composed for first violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and his colleagues). In these works, Beethoven seems to have diligently sought out the advice of his performers, matching technical situations to their aptitudes as well as to the demands of the compositions themselves.

The Op. 5 sonatas are the first cello sonatas in which the piano and the cello share equal billing. They contrast with earlier works such as Boccherini’s cello sonatas, in which the keyboardist must realize a suggestive but skeletal figured bass. In Op. 5, Beethoven not only composes out the keyboard part but also uses it as a vehicle for virtuosic display, incorporating pianistic techniques rooted in his experience as an improviser. These techniques—lightning-fast scales, sweeping arpeggios, parallel octaves and sixths, challenging figural patterns, and sudden shifts of texture and mood—are matched by an equally demanding array of cello techniques, including rapid string crossings, soaring arpeggios, multiple-stopped chords, and high-position melodies.

Both sonatas open with fantasia-like Adagio sostenutos. These are finely wrought and rhetorically pregnant slow introductions of the kind later encountered in the “Grande Sonate Pathétique,” Op. 13 (1798), though considerably longer. Indeed, one would be inclined to consider these Adagios independent movements, if not for their inchoate, exploratory quality and their lack of closure (both arrive expectantly on the dominant). These introductions give way to capacious Allegros in sonata form, followed by Rondo finales. This peculiar two-movement, three-part design seems to have been unique to Beethoven, although there are near precedents in Mozart’s Violin Sonatas in C Major, K. 303, and G Major, K. 379. While these sonatas make use of the same outward structure, they complement each other expressively. The first sonata, in F major, shares with certain later works in that key—most notably the “Spring” Sonata for Violin and Piano (1800–1801) and the “Pastoral” Symphony (1808)— a bucolic mood, in this case mediated by concerto-like passagework reminiscent of the second and third piano sonatas of Beethoven’s Op. 2 (1795). Beethoven seeks equanimity between the players, who reciprocate themes and engage in playful call and response textures. In both the Allegro and the Rondo, virtuosic outbursts are tempered by hushed, fantasia-like passages, early evidence of Beethoven’s lifelong tendency toward flat-side introspection.

The second sonata is in G minor, a remarkably rare key in Beethoven’s output. In his Elementi teorico-practici di musica (1796), Francesco Galeazzi described this key as having “almost the same character as C minor; but it is a little less grandiose: it is suited to frenzy, despair, agitation, etc.” (quoted in Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries [Rochester, 2002], 105). This description is appropriate to Op. 5, no. 2, with its pervasive sforzandos, furious arpeggios, and restless mood. The Allegro’s main theme provides a source of tension throughout the movement, pulling briefly toward C minor before confirming the home key. In the Rondo, Beethoven inverts this formula with a main theme that starts on C major, a striking off-tonic opening that anticipates the finale of the Fourth Piano Concerto (1806), also in G major. In this Rondo, Beethoven achieves a frenzied ebullience, juxtaposing lyrical intensity with virtuosic élan. Although both parts are replete with brilliant figuration, the cello ultimately steals the show with a torrential bout of string crossings, a passage that occurs no fewer than five times during the movement.

Keiran Campbell, cello
Sezi Seskir, fortepiano

Keiran Campbell
was drawn to the cello after he stumbled across one in his grandmother’s basement and was baffled by its size. Once he turned 8, he began taking lessons—on a much smaller cello—in his native Greensboro, North Carolina. After studying extensively with Leonid Zilper, former solo cellist of the Bolshoi Ballet, he received his Bachelors and Masters at the Juilliard School, working with Darrett Adkins, Timothy Eddy, and Phoebe Carrai. Keiran also spent several springs in Cornwall, England, studying with Steven Isserlis and Ralph Kirshbaum at Prussia Cove. Keiran has performed with ensembles including The English Concert, NYBI, Philharmonia Baroque, The Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Four Nations Ensemble, and Les Violons du Roy. He recently performed with Le Concert Des Nations under Jordi Savall, touring Europe performing Beethoven Symphonies before recording them on Savall’s new Beethoven CD. During the summers, Keiran has performed with Teatro Nuovo, Lakes Area Music Festival, and The Carmel Bach Festival. He is also on faculty at the recently formed, UC Berkeley-based, Chamber Music Collective, which focuses primarily on post-1750 performance practice. Recent performance highlights include concerto appearances with Tafelmusik and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, a concert of Monteverdi Madrigals with Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations in Carnegie Hall, a solo recital with fortepianist Sezi Seskir at the Berkeley Early Music festival, and performances of Handel’s Saul and Solomon with English Concert at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh Festival. Keiran is also fascinated by instrument making, which he studies with the maker of his cello, Timothy Johnson.

Sezi Seskir
received her first degree in piano in Ankara, Turkey, with Prof. Kamuran Gündemir. She went on with her studies at the Lübeck Musikhochschule, in Germany, with Prof. Konstanze Eickhorst, where in 2005 she completed degrees in both artistic and pedagogical piano. Along with many solo recitals in Europe, the USA and Turkey, she also performed with various orchestras as a soloist, playing Schumann's A-minor piano concerto Op. 54, Ravel's Concerto in G-major and Mozart's A-major, K. 414 piano concerto.

Seskir’s musical direction took a new turn after completing her D.M.A. degree in performance practice with Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University. Her experience performing on a variety of historical keyboards, including 5-octave instruments from the second half of the 18th century, as well as 6 and 6.5-octave instruments from the first half of the 19th century, enriched and deepened her understanding of the genres and repertoire of these periods. Her research focuses on the use of tempo rubato in Robert Schumann's keyboard music, as well as performance practices of the 18th and the 19th centuries. She has given guest lecture-recitals and workshops at schools such as Stanford University, Penn State University, Princeton University, Trinity College of London, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and UC Berkeley. She presented her work on Schumann at King's College London, the American Musicological Society’s meetings, the Schumann-Haus in Zwickau, Germany, and the Basel Musikhochschule in Switzerland. These last two presentations resulted in two articles, both of which appeared by Studio Punkt Verlag, in Germany and in Basel, Switzerland, respectively. Her editions of Robert Schumann's piano works Arabeske Op. 18 and Blumenstück Op.19 for the Schumann Complete Edition published by Schott and Bärenreiter, appeared in 2016 and 2021. Seskir co-edited a collection of essays on interpretation titled ‘Topics in Musical Interpretation’, which appeared by Routledge in 2023.

Sezi Seskir is an associate professor of music at Bucknell University. She regularly performs with her chamber music partners violinist Lucy Russell and cellist Keiran Campbell. Seskir and Russell released a CD of Beethoven’s violin sonatas on period instruments in 2020 by Acis Label. She is the co-founder of Chamber Music Collective, an intense chamber music program on period instruments.

Booklet für Beethoven: Cello Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1 & 2