Cello Sonatas Nos. 4 and 5 (Beethoven)

A subsequent ‘good’ copy was supplied in February 1816 to Charles Neate for proposed, though unrealized, publication in London.

3, the complexity of their composition and their visionary character marks (which they share with the subsequently completed piano sonata Op 101) the start of Beethoven's "third period".

Both movements recall the long-established convention of a slow introduction to a brisk main section in sonata form, but with significant modifications.

In the first movement, the introductory portion entirely lacks the portentousness of a conventional slow introduction, consisting of a brief elegiac theme repeated several times without change of key and largely unvaried; it concludes with an elaborate cadence in C major that is then contradicted by the sonata portion being in the relative minor, largely avoiding the key of C major except at the opening of the development.

The second movement opens more in the manner of a traditional slow introduction and eventually leads to a sonata-form portion in the 'correct' key of C. However, before this point is reached, the opening material of the sonata reappears for a final, almost ecstatic variation, a procedure paralleled elsewhere in Beethoven's work only in the drama of the fifth and ninth symphonies.

In a plentiful discography, the interpretations by the Latvian cellist Mischa Maisky with the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich are highly regarded (DG 437514, 1993; this recording has been reissued by ArchivMusic).

Pablo Casals, who became especially interested in chamber music and concertos for cello by the end of the 19th century, and performed many works that had by then become long-neglected, recorded at least two complete studio sets of the five Beethoven cello sonatas in addition to a number of recordings of individual sonatas, all highly influential in respect to subsequent interpretations.

Casals' second complete studio set of the Beethoven sonatas was recorded with Rudolf Serkin at the 1951 Perpignan Festival (No.