The Cello Sonata in G minor is a work by John Ireland, composed in 1923 and premiered on 4 April 1924 by Beatrice Harrison and pianist Evlyn Howard-Jones at the Aeolian Hall, London. [1] Harrison then performed it again at the Salzburg ISCM Festival in August the same year. Ireland subsequently performed and recorded the Sonata for Columbia Records in 1928 with Antoni Sala. [2] Lionel Tertis made an arrangement for viola in 1941 and played it with Ireland at one of the wartime National Gallery concerts that year. [3]
There are three movements: Moderato e sostenuto (which begins quietly but with an important four-note motif that informs the rest of the work); Poco largamente, a lyrical, pastoral movement in the key of Eb; and (without a break) the lively Con moto e marcato, returning to G minor. [4] Performances typically last between 20 and 25 minutes.
Sala described it as "the best cello sonata of modern times". [4] Pablo Casals also thought highly of the piece, but political circumstances prevented him performing it at the time. [5] Ireland had previously written two violin sonatas and a piano sonata. This was his only major composition of 1923. [6]
Sir Donald Francis Tovey was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist. He had been best known for his Essays in Musical Analysis and his editions of works by Bach and Beethoven, but since the 1990s his compositions have been recorded and performed with increasing frequency. The recordings have mostly been well received by reviewers.
John Nicholson Ireland was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work "The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man".
Ernest John Smeed Moeran was an English composer whose work was strongly influenced by English and Irish folk music of which he was an assiduous collector. His output includes orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber and keyboard works, and a number of choral and song cycles as well as individual songs.
Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, his last major completed work, is a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. Elgar composed it in the aftermath of the First World War, when his music had already become out of fashion with the concert-going public. In contrast with Elgar's earlier Violin Concerto, which is lyrical and passionate, the Cello Concerto is for the most part contemplative and elegiac.
The Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69, is the third of five cello sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed it in 1807–08, during his productive middle period. It was first performed in 1809 by cellist Nikolaus Kraft and pianist Dorothea von Ertmann, a student of Beethoven. Published by Breitkopf & Härtel the same year, it was dedicated to Freiherr Ignaz von Gleichenstein, Beethoven's friend and an amateur cellist. The sonata was successful with audiences from the beginning.
William Yeates Hurlstone was an English composer. Showing brilliant musical talent from an early age, he died young, before his full potential could be realized. Nevertheless, he left behind an exquisite, albeit small, body of work. His teacher Sir Charles Villiers Stanford considered him the most talented of his pupils, above Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.
Franz Theodor Reizenstein was a German-born British composer and concert pianist. He left Germany for sanctuary in Britain in 1934 and went on to have his teaching and performing career there. As a composer, he successfully blended the equally strong but very different influences of his primary teachers, Hindemith and Vaughan Williams.
Sir John Blackwood McEwen was a Scottish classical composer and educator. He was professor of harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, from 1898 to 1924, and principal from 1924 to 1936. He was a prolific composer, but made few efforts to bring his music to the notice of the general public.
Cello Sonatas No. 1 and No. 2, Op. 5, are two sonatas for cello and piano written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1796, while he was in Berlin. While there, Beethoven met the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II, an ardent music-lover and keen cellist. Although the sonatas are dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II, Ferdinand Ries tells us that Beethoven "played several times at the court, where he also played the two cello sonatas, opus 5, composed for Duport and himself". Although Jean-Pierre Duport was one of the King's teachers, it is now thought to have been his brother Jean-Louis Duport who had the honor of premiering these sonatas.
Charles Edgeworth Cagney Lynch was an Irish pianist who premiered works by several important 20th-century composers.
Harry Farjeon was a British composer and an influential teacher of harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music for more than 45 years.
Marie Novello, also known as Marie Novello Williams was a Welsh pianist. She was one of Theodor Leschetizky's last students and performed in public from childhood. Her early death cut short a promising career just as she began to record for one of the major English labels, having already amassed a considerable discography for one of its second-rank competitors.
Beatrice Harrison was a British cellist active in the first half of the 20th century. She gave first performances of several important English works, especially those of Frederick Delius, and made the first or standard recordings of others, particularly the first recording of Elgar’s cello concerto in 1920 with the composer conducting.
The Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65, was written by Frédéric Chopin in 1846-1847. It is one of only nine works of Chopin published during his lifetime that were written for instruments other than piano. Chopin composed four sonatas, the other three being piano sonatas. The cello sonata was the last of Chopin's works to be published in his lifetime.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 was completed in November 1901 and published a year later.
Michele Esposito was an Italian composer, conductor and pianist who spent most of his professional life in Dublin, Ireland.
Richard Henry Walthew, often known as Richard H. Walthew was an English composer and pianist, and an important figure in English chamber music during the first half of the 20th century.
Pamela Harrison was an English composer, pianist and music teacher.
James Friskin was a Scottish-born pianist, composer and music teacher who relocated to the United States in 1914.
Alfred Michael Wall was a British violinist and composer who was for a long time associated with the Newcastle Conservatoire.