Cello Sonata in D Minor

When Debussy began his Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano in 1915, he had written little chamber music since his String Quartet in 1893; instead he had preferred to compose for the orchestra, while also producing a steady output of songs and piano music. But the First World War was now making it harder to put on orchestral concerts, and when Debussy’s publisher suggested a smaller-scale chamber-music project, the composer took up the idea. Compared to the sensuous, impressionistic manner of Debussy’s pre-war works, his style in the Cello Sonata is drier and more terse, reflecting his interest in French composers of the 18th-century Baroque era, particularly Rameau and Couperin. There are three movements, with the first two functioning like preludes to the weightier and more intense finale. The opening movement’s elaborately ornamented cello melody has Debussy’s idiom sounding quite close to Bartók’s; and in the “Sérénade” that follows, the cello’s insistent pizzicato sounded startlingly modernistic to the Sonata’s early audiences.