Cello Sonata
By Gyorgy Ligeti

The piece is about 10 minutes long with two movements. The first movement is a haunting mock-baroque style dialogue with distinctive glissando chords sprinkled throughout. This movement is very beautiful and is worth the effort to master. There are some contrapuntal or 2 voices sections. The second movement consists...

of very fast runs of semiquavers and is quite nervous and quivering in flavour. The last movement of Britten’s First Cello Suite may well have been inspired by the 2nd movement of the Ligeti. Both are abrupt, full of nervous energy with restatements of previous themes. This sonata was composed in the late 1940s but was only first recorded by Haimovitz only relatively recently and given its beauty, one wonders why it was not recorded previously. With practice, the first movement would be accessible by an intermediate player but the second movement is for grown-ups only! The quality of the sheet music is excellent with clear, well spaced printing on cream paper.