Day 3

Welcome to Day 3 - did you show up at the time you set?
If not, why not?

There’s a video, a pdf, and - of course - some recommended listening :)

Downloads:
1, just in case you need somewhere to write stuff down.
You don’t need to fill in all the lines, btw.

Today’s Recommended Listening:

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata for Cello and Piano, op. 38: Movement 1
Gregor Piatigorsky / Arthur Rubinstein
[Spotify] - 10 minutes

When we refer to Sonatas, things get a little weird. A “Piano Sonata” means a multi-movement work for solo piano. If we say any other instrument followed by the word sonata, e.g. “Violin Sonata” or “Sousaphone Sonata,” 97% of the time we mean an equal collaboration between the named instrument AND the piano. So Violin + Piano. Sousaphone + Piano - a true dream come true.

In the case of Cello Sonatas, that’s still not completely true either - the cello was often more like an electric bass guitar backing up the keyboard instrument until Beethoven’s 3rd Cello Sonata, where he finally treats cello and piano as equals. It’s almost like sonatas were piano Showpieces with cello Accompaniment until then.

Brahms, who lived after Beethoven, wrote two Cello Sonatas, one relatively early and one relatively late in his career. This is the earlier one, op. 38, and it’s dark and moody and great for a rainy morning.

As an aside, one day I was reading an analysis of Radiohead’s OK Computer and it was suggested that the opening of the album may have pulled from the opening of this Brahms Cello Sonata. Not sure if that’s true but you’ll hear the similarity if you check it out ;)

Arthur Rubinstein is maybe my favorite piano interpreter of romantic-era music and I grew up on this recording of him playing with the great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky.

Piatigorsky eventually taught and performed alongside Jascha Heifitz at USC. Prokofiev and Walton wrote Cello Concertos for him, and he worked with Stravinsky to create the Suite Italienne.

See you tomorrow!
—Eric