Teaching EQ Playing

MASTERCLASS

BEETHOVEN CELLO SONATA NO.4

IN C MAJOR OR102 NO.1
Cellist Amit Peled gives his thoughts on a second movement of introspection and wild exploration,
written as the composer was coming to terms with his hearing loss

~ 1his sonata used to be mandatory in the Rostropovich Competition because

it's so demanding both technically and musically. Particularly towards
Berthoven 1.
the end, this movement pushes cellists right out oftheir comfort zone
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Irlil'·wri:,1.i /,4:£./. d
/ even though as a whole it is not as hard as the Third Sonata. Musically,
its exploratory agenda means thar it Still sounds disorientating today, and you've got

to be ready to inhabit those spaces fully, and to make wild contrasts.

Finding the cello's emotive voice

If I were to generalise, the first two sonatas are definitely for piano and cello - in that
order. You are always accompanying the piano. He is exploring and asking what he can
do with this instrument. There are a lot of ideas and it is as if Beethoven is showing
From Beethoven Cello how good he is. With the Third Sonata he has what I like to call the chutzpah not only
Sonata in C major op.102 to master the cello but to start with it on its own, and both instrunients are totally
no.1. Urtext edition.
equal. However with the Fourth Sonata, written in his late period when he had lost
paperbound with marked
and unmarked string his hearing, it's as if he's not writing with a strong sense of these instruments; it could
part. Ed. Jens Dufner. be sting or played on violin or flute. And it sounds philosophical, between Beethoven
Vcl fingering and bowing and God ifyou like. It came after along period of not writing and you get the sense
David Geringas. Order
that without the 11eed to impress anyone he simply had to express these thoughts
no. HN 1474. ISMN
979-0-2018-1474-2. in music. One can fully understand that by playing all five sonatas in a concert.
Printed with permission Having a slow movement of this length for cello is a first. In his Third Sonata,
of G. Henle Verlag, Beethoven writes a slow movement two lines long, which was normal, but here he has
Munich © 2020
realised the expressive potential of the instrument much more fully.
For me. one of the most magical places in all of these five sonalas is bar 7. In that
bar it is as if Beethoven found what the cello could do. I spent a lot of time on it with

--------------------------2 THE -
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* 'If the sforzandos point

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4 k. 1 ~1 111 1 0 The Amit Peled Online Academy

, lili L - (bj.t,.1.Y/.32.2.kSQS) meets for the third time in
· re't' i April 2023, gathering cellists from around
P. 3 . ... .0 the world for an intensive course based 2
/ *1 4 0 on his technique book, The First Hours E
4
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1 4 THE STRAD APRIL 2023 nestrad.Con-


Bernard Greenhouse, who had very
particular ideas about how to shape
the phrase with vibrato. The tendency
would be to launch into full operatic
voice from the second note, but
Greenhouse would insist that you
start small, gradually increasing the
size ofvibrato and allow the fullest
sound only on the second F sharp,
from there gradually decreasing the
vibratioii until the G ofbar 8 which
can be played almost senza vibrato.
It sounds simple enough but it is really
hard to execute.
The string player's ability to change
colour within a note comes ilito its
own in the bar before, and I would
work on this with students. Although
it is a pain to ger perfect intonation on
the double-stopped E flats and the C and
A Rat, you can bring so much more to
the performance bv looking past that,
saving bow and unleashing a different
colour on the second halfofeach of
those beats.
Promise and nostalgia
In a class I took with him many years
ago. I remember Daniel Barenboim
talking about how Beethoven refers
to themes f~om earlier parts of a work.
When a theme first appears it has
potential, like a young person falling in
love and anticipating the life ahead of
them. When it reappears, as the opening
of the first movement does at the Tempo
d'Andante in bar 10, it is looking back,
and I like to make an analogy of a
grandfather telling.' his Ugrandchildren
about how he fell in love with their
grandma. It is the same story but
experienced very differently.
To get to this point of remembering,
we have passed through so much:
through the whole first movement and
the slow movement iii terms of this
piece, so the transition at the end of bar
9 is a really special moment. It took me a
long time to work out how to capture it
on the cello, and in looking for a different
colour on each note I experimented
with playing the last three Gs, each
on a different string. fhat's really good
in theory but it can never be in tune,
so I actually play the last two notes as
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MASTERCLASS
harnionics on the G string: one with
no vibrato and only a little bow, and the
other harmonic with some weight and a
lot of bow, and then you gently find the
G in bar 10 on the A string. The cello is
on its own at the end of bar 9 so it is an
invitation to be utterly free - a moment
outside oftime.
Tempo
What we have here is three movements
in one, and speaking as someone who
conducts as well as plays 1 think it's
important to find three tenipos that
relate to each other. With the Adagio
there is a tradition for even the quaver (:)
pulse to be extremely slow because of
4 11
the hemidemisemiquavers 64). Cellists
may tend to luxuriate iii those
undulating hemidemisemiquaver
patteins, but pianists will easily
dispatch them as flourishes at a faster
tempo and that allows the syncopations
to be heard, as well as possibly being
closer to what Beethoven had in mind.
David Finckel of the Emerson Quarter
once pointed out to me in a masterclass
that when someone becomes deaf, what
they hear in their head will be a little
faster and more agitated because it
doesni have the physical space to
resonate and be heard. On top of that
the movement is simply marked Adagio,
not Adagio sostenuto or Molto adagio,
which are far more common in
Beethoven. If we choose a tempo thal
allows the crotchet (:) pulse 10 be heard
in the Adagio then the Tempo d'Andante
can have afeeling oftwo, even thoughit
will be in six, and that quaver pulse then
informs the tempo of the Allegro vivace.
Fortepianos and sforzandos
One could play whole passages of
this music in a way that was simply
decorative and didn't challenge the ear,
but to do that you would have to ignore
all thejortepianos and sforzandos. To
my mind it is important to choose an
Allegro vivace tempo that is moderate
enough to allow them to register.
Playing Beethoven quarrets with
Samuel Rhodes (former violist of the
Juilliard Quarter) at the Marlborough
Festival was quite an experience for the
attention to detail. He insisted that
' Beethoven need time and
fortepianos in
space beforehand and he would make us
stop before each one, to make a point of
it. You can do this easily enough in the
Adagio section, and with determination
one can also bring that intention clearly
to the fortepianosin the Allegro vivace
so they really stand out.
W thefbrtepianos require an emotional
attack then the sforzandos require a more
technical attack - they sound shorter and
sharper. In the Allegro section they are
used at points in the structure to
over-emphasise what could sound settled,
like the repetition of G major chords in
bars 64-73. After a bar's silence a door
opens in bar 75 into a totally different
world, much like the transition into the
Allegro vivace at bar 17, only this door
gets shut pretty quickly. The same
happens again and then as we pass
through the third door in bar 87,
harmonically worlds away from home,
the piano and cello enter into a canon.
It is as if Beethoven realises how far he
has pushed and wants to return to the
conventions ofthe dav. If the sforzandos
point to departure, they also light the
wayhome from bar 114 to C inajor
in bar 122.
Virtuosity
While the Third Sonata sounds more
sophisticated, some ofthe most fiendish
passages Beethoven wrote for cello are
in this Allegro, in particular the second
halfwhere the passagework iii bars
157-178 iseven higher than it was the
first time. He wrote this piece with King
Friedrich Wilhelm in mind, who was a
cellist and would have been keen to
show off the new-found teclitiique of
thumb position. Accordingly, I like to
make full Lise of it here. Even though we
can move up and down much more than
cellists of the time, I find staying in one
position stabilises the intonation and
allows the virtuosity and bravura you
need with the bow.
Perhaps the esoteric musical world
and supreme technical challenges can
be off-putting, but in the end they are
what makes this piece so compelling. #
INTERVIEW BY HELENA RUINARD
APRIL 2023 THESTRAD (•)
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