Both Frédéric Chopin and Edvard Grieg devoted themselves to cello and piano sonatas only once, yet both works have established themselves as indispensable references in the repertoire.
Chopin composed his Sonata, Op. 65, between 1845 and 1846, perhaps during the most troubled period of his life, and in 1848, one year before his death, he performed it together with the cellist Auguste Franchomme, the dedicatee of the work and a lifelong friend.
Grieg’s Sonata, Op. 36, dates instead from 1882, when the composer was twenty-seven years old. Grieg wrote it for his brother John, an amateur cellist, and performed it for the first time in Dresden with Ludwig Grützmacher on the cello. It was a piece that witnessed a major generational transition in the history of performance as well, to the extent that in 1906 Grieg performed it at one of his last concerts with the then thirty-year-old Pablo Casals.
Playing them in succession, we found ourselves faced with two great works with very different personalities. Chopin’s writing has a profoundly lyrical and narrative dimension, but does not fear surrendering to drama when the atmospheres become intense. Introspection, refined playfulness, and the most sincere passions find their voice in a highly articulated instrumental form, at times unabashedly virtuosic and brilliant. The sonata carries with it that particular light
found in works of maturity: intense, fragile, essential. It is music that does not reveal itself easily, but which, once one has passed through it, leaves a profound trace.
Grieg, on the other hand, looks towards the horizon. The melodies seem to be traversed by wind, light, and the silence of forests inhabited by folkloric supernatural creatures that populate part of his output: although not explicitly, the same Grieg of the trolls and caves of Peer Gynt is present in this Sonata. And yet, although they speak different languages, both of these sonatas share the same sincerity. The writing is dense, the interplay between the two instruments fluid, and at every moment both have the possibility of expressing themselves freely in search of something more enduring: an authentic dialogue, in which every note seems to exist because it could not be otherwise.