# programme notes #

Completed in Berlin in October, 1955, the Cello Sonata dates from Crumb's student days and reflects well-established traditions of composition for solo cello. The opening Fantasia is based upon the interval of a descending minor third, first heard after a series of plucked chords. The middle movement consists of a theme in binary form, three variation, and a coda in which the theme is repeated on muted strings. The final Toccata is again dominated by thirds which are played in both rising and falling patterns.

Christopher Wilkinson

programme notes in CD booklet, Deutsche Grammophon 431 813-2

In George Crumb's Sonata for Solo Violoncello we have a good example of a work by an American composer living in much freer political and stylistic circumstances [than György Ligeti] but facing essentially the same problems of his age: the search for an individual response to the musical revolutions of the first half of the century referred to above. Written in 1955, during the time Crumb was a graduate student of Boris Blacher in Berlin, the three-movement Sonata also owes a certain amount to Bartók. An opening Fantasia, making expressive use of pizzicato, is followed by a Tema pastorale con variazioni, in which a highly chromatic theme is put through its paces in three variations and a coda. The final movement is a Toccata which, after a short slow introduction, makes much use of dynamic and timbral contrasts.

Keith Potter

programme notes in CD booklet, Deutsche Grammophon 431 813-2

When George Crumb appeared on the American musical scene in the 1970s, he seemd the composer many had been waiting for. In an age when complex, dissonant, cerebral works were everywhere, Crumb offered a dark brooding Romanticism and an unparalleled sensitivity to sound. He spoke of the power and expressivenes of music: "I believe that music surpasses even language in its power to mirror the innermost recesses of the human soul." His Ancient Voices of Children and Black Angels reached out to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. His scores, themselves, were visual works of art, with staves often swirling in circles and spirals. Crumb, a quiet, reticent man from West Virginia, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had demonstrated a unique voice.

Of course Crumb had been composing for many years prior to his successes of the 1970s and beyond. But it was only in the mid-1950s, after studying with Ross Lee Finney in Michigan and a year in Berlin, that he felt his compositions had reached a level to allow them to remain in the repertoire. The Sonata for Solo Violoncello is one of the first such pieces. Composed in Berlin and completed on return to Ann Arbor, Michigan to complete his doctorate, it is reminiscent of both Romanticism and Bela Bartok.

The Sonata is in three movements, a fantasia, a set of variations, and a toccata. Crumb's sensitivity to sonority is evident in the opening of the first movement, where he juxtaposes dissonant, pizzicato chords in the bass with a haunting theme in the middle register of the cello. The theme is built around descending minor thirds. The movement intensifies to a climax in the middle on a series of harmonic sixths, after which the original theme and chords return, and the movement ends softly. The second movement is a set of variations on a Siciliano, a pastoral theme in flowing compound meter. The third and final variation (before a coda) is slower and more passionate. The final movement, a toccata, is based on a triadic theme, in which ascending C minor and A-flat major triads are mirrored by descending B minor and E-flat major triads. In the middle Crumb reprises the principal theme from the first movement, only here with a much faster and more energetic character.

Michael Broyles