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In the summer of 1796 Beethoven travelled to Berlin, where he appeared at the court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. The King was a keen cellist, and he employed two of the leading players of the day - Jean-Pierre Duport and his younger brother Jean-Louis. According to his pupil and biographer Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven played his hurriedly-composed two sonatas Op.5 together with one of the Duport brothers (probably Jean-Louis), and they were published the following year with a dedication to Friedrich Wilhelm II. The sonatas were the first important works of their kind since Bach, and the increased power of the piano over the harpsichord posed severe problems of balance between the two instruments. Those problems became more acute in music of a slow, sustained character, and it's significant that not until his last cello sonata did Beethoven attempt to write a fully-fledged slow movement. In the first four he opted instead for a slow introduction either to the first movement (the two Op. 5 Sonatas), the finale (Op. 69), or both (the C major Sonata Op. 102 no. 1).
The avoidance of a self-contained slow movement in the Op.5 sonatas led Beethoven to adopt a form in two movements only, with the first of them prefaced by a substantial slow introduction. The opening movement of the F major Sonata Op. 5 No.1 is on a grand scale, and its concerto propensities are underlined by an extended cadenza near its close.

The opening movement of the second sonata in the pair finds Beethoven's early style at its most dramatic, and its slow introduction conveys the weight and substance of a sonata movement in itself.
The A major Sonata Op. 69 was written in 1807, at the time that Beethoven was carrying out the principal work on his Fifth Symphony. The sonata has a scherzo, rather than a slow movement, at its centre, and the success of its unusual plan is due not only to the relaxed nature of its opening movement, but also to the presence of a short, serene Adagio preceding the finale - not so much an introduction, as a drastically curtailed slow movement proper.

The two Sonatas Op. 102, written in the summer of 1815, stand on the threshold of Beethoven's last period - a time marked by a new-found interest in the strict discipline of fugue, as well as a fascination with open-ended forms. The design of the C major first work in the pair, consisting of two quick sonata-form movements each prefaced by a slow introduction, is unique in Beethoven. Moreover, not only does the Sonata appear to begin in mid-stream, but the material of the opening bars returns immediately before the final Allegro, as a means of highlighting the underlying unity of the work as a whole.

The D major Sonata Op. 102 No.2 is altogether more conventionally shaped, with a brooding slow movement in the minor as its centrepiece. That Adagio is one of Beethoven's great tragic utterances - a piece that shows a progressive increase in poignancy, from its dark chorale-like opening, through a warmly lyrical D major middle section and an intensified reprise, to a coda in which the cello introduces a new bitter-sweet melody of infinite sadness. The finale is the first of the many fugues in Beethoven's late music - the direct forerunner of the colossal fugal finale of the Hammerklavier Piano Sonata Op.106.

©Misha Donat