Sonata for cello and Piano (2024)
Duration: 20:00 minutes
Instrumentation: cello, piano
Premiere: October 26, 2025 by Julian Schwarz, cello and Christopher Guzman, piano at Bennack Concert Hall, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, TX
Notes:
My cello sonata begins with a motive that runs through the whole work: a brief symmetrical figure (B-flat, A, C, D, E, G, F-sharp), stated first by the cello alone. The first movement, in a loose sonata form, explores this motive as well as the idea of mirror symmetry in general. The second movement is a brisk scherzo, with a trio section that is an extended inversion canon, in which the piano echoes the cello’s harmonics, but upside-down. The last movement is a free fantasy that makes a continual accelerando. It begins with an extremely slow, octave-displaced statement of the motive (almost unrecognizable in this form), which returns several times, each faster than the last. Between and through these statements, the music becomes more and more active, eventually becoming a swirl of scales passed between the cello and piano. At the very end, the opening motive collapses in on itself, right-side-up and upside-down at the same time, a strange sort of balance finally achieved in one intense concluding gesture.