2026 Festival Launch Concert

Gems of the Romantic Cello

Tim Lowe (cello) & Stephen Gutman (piano)

15 May 2026, 7:30pm

National Centre for Early Music, York

Tickets: £20.00 | Free entry for students and under-18s (valid ID required at the door).

Join us for an evening of passionate, virtuosic music-making by these two internationally acclaimed musicians; cellist Tim Lowe and pianist Stephen Gutman as they explore some of the most expressive and beautiful works from the repertoire for cello and piano. True gems!

Tim and Stephen invite you to share their evening ....

“…hear what one of Beethoven’s famous improvisations at the piano might have sounded like, hear Saint-Saëns’s delight in beautiful, sunlit melodies – hear the young Richard Strauss’s sonata full of verve and vitality, signposting his future – come and hear the unfolding of Schumann’s gently meandering love song ending in an ecstatic outburst of happiness!“

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

12 Variations on "See the conqu'ring hero comes" from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus Wo0 45

Camille Saint-Saëns (1832 – 1921) Cello Sonata No. 1 in C Minor Op. 32

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Cello Sonata in F Major, Op. 6

Robert Schumann (1810 -1856) Adagio and Allegro Op. 70

Programme notes

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

12 Variations on "See the conqu'ring hero comes" from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus Wo0 45

In 1796 Beethoven paid a visit to the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm II in Berlin, and cellists the world over are glad that he did. From this visit resulted a number of works for cello and piano that set the world of between-the-knees string playing on a new path with three masterful compositions: the Variations on a Theme from Handel’s ‘Judas Maccabaeus’ and the cello sonatas Op. 5 No. 1 in F major and No. 2 in G minor.

Beethoven’s reverence for Handel is well documented, and his choice of the stirring chorus “See, the conqu’ring hero comes” for his variations might well have been prompted by a recent production of Judas Maccabaeus in Vienna organized by Baron von Swieten in 1794. His choice of the cello to pair with the piano was undoubtedly influenced by the King’s own preference for this instrument. Friedrich Wilhelm was an amateur cellist and a notable patron of the arts, His Berlin court glistened with the lustre of cellists Jean-Pierre Duport (1741-1818) and his brother Jean-Louis Duport (1749 - 1819), one of whom (historians can’t decide which) collaborated with Beethoven in performing his new cello and piano works before the King.

If the theme of this set of variations sounds familiar, it might well be because you have sung it in church, as the Easter hymn “Thine Be the Glory”. The tune has a three- part A-B-A structure, with the B-section dipping briefly into the minor mode. In his variations Beethoven leaves the harmonies and phrase structure largely intact, preferring to let the dramatic narrative unfold through accelerations in tempo and alternations between solo melody and more conversational imitative textures.

A dramatic coup de théâtre arrives right away when the first variation is played by the piano … alone. This makes the audience wait till the second variation for the entrance of the cello, now cast in the role of an opera diva introduced by a long ritornello. While there is a lot of brilliant writing for the piano – Beethoven was writing for his own hand, after all – the cellist, too, gets his place in the sun as a virtuoso in the rapid-fire triplets of Variation 7.

The apogee of lyrical intensity comes in the poised and elegant Variation 11 Adagio, the longest variation of the set, with its highly ornamented melody and harp-like arpeggios in the piano. The cello lives up to its opera- diva billing in the B-section with an intense outburst of emotion worthy (and reminiscent) of Albinoni’s famous Adagio. Calculating that the King’s toes tap better in threes, Beethoven changes the time signature to 3/8 for the final rondo-like romp that ends with a thrilling high trill in the piano before the final chords.

programme note reproduced with the kind permission of Steven Isserlis (patron of York Chamber Music Festival)

Camille Saint-Saëns (1832 – 1921) Cello Sonata No. 1 in C Minor Op. 32

I Allegro II Andante tranquillo sostenuto III Allegro moderato

Saint-Saëns’s reputation as a grumpy old man who lived too long is outrageously unjustified. He might have been irascible and honest to the point of being blunt but the myth really stems from the end of his life when his work was compared unfavourably with Pierrot Lunaire or The Rite of Spring. One has to remember that Camille was born when Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann were young men and because he started composing at a very young age – he wrote a piece for piano when he was three – the source of his musical personality is there, in the early mid-nineteenth century. He was an infant prodigy who at the age of ten could play any of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas from memory. For more than eight decades he wrote music, as he said, “as an apple tree produces apples.” He wrote operas, symphonies, concertos, songs and chamber music in great profusion, including along the way a commission to compose the national anthem of Uruguay and the first film score of any note (L’Assasinat du Duc de Guise)!

Saint-Saëns championed Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt and breathed new life into the French school based on formidable scholarship including editing the first edition of the complete music of Rameau. He brought Mozart and Bach into the mainstream of French musical life. Into the bargain Saint-Saëns was a legendary organist (the greatest in the world according to Liszt) and for many years was organist at L'église de la Madeleine in Paris (where he was succeeded in 1877 by his protégé Fauré). And in addition to all this he was a botanist of some repute (he collected butterflies) an astronomer (he designed his own telescope), historian, poet and philosopher. Need we go on. This was a man of immense talents. He was an erudite, purist composer whose music did not lack profundity as his accusers argued and as Stephen Isserlis suggests “I hope that Saint-Saëns’s delight in beautiful melodies, in well-rounded forms, and in sunlit musical smiles may be seen not as a weakness but as a virtue.”

The first of his two cello sonatas followed hard on the heels of the famous First Cello Concerto, both dating from 1872. The sonatas sombre tonality perhaps reflects the more dramatic face of the composer. It is known that he was profoundly disturbed by the French defeat at Sedan in 1871 (during the Franco-Prussian War when Napoleon III and the entire French army were captured). The sonata feels like an outlet for pent up emotions and there is a rather antagonistic relationship between the instruments. The piece ends in sunnier climes with the darker mood giving way to an up-beat, well-ordered conclusion, typical of the composer.

programme note reproduced with the kind permission of Steven Isserlis (patron of York Chamber Music Festival)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Cello Sonata in F Major, Op. 6

Allegro con brio Andante ma non troppo Finale - Allegro vivo

Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864. His father was principal horn in the Munich Court Orchestra for over 40 years. He was widely considered the greatest horn virtuoso of the 19th century. Richard’s mother was the daughter of Georg Pschorr one of the wealthiest ‘beer’ barons in Munich and so Richard was supported by his family in his early years. He showed amazing facility as a child – learning the piano from age four and the violin (age eight) and was composing at six.

His father’s musical taste was conservative and young Richard was encouraged to listen to the music of the older masters, including Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann, all of whose influences can be clearly heard in Strauss's cello sonata, which he began to compose in 1881 at the age of seventeen. He revised the work extensively during the winter of 1882-1883, preserving only the introductory Allegro con brio, in which the cello is treated in a heroic style anticipating his tone poem, "Don Juan", of 1888. When the sonata was first performed in Berlin in 1884, he was congratulated on the opening lyrical theme by the legendary violinist and composer, Joseph Joachim.

The vitality and verve of the opening pervade the entire first movement, whose unified thematic structure shows the influence of Beethoven and Schumann. There is extensive dialogue between the cello and piano, and an ingenious four-part fugue leading into the recapitulation. The second movement, with its pensive, dark-hued atmosphere and sensitive theme in "Romanza" style, is clearly inspired by Mendelssohn - possibly by one of his "Songs without Words". (Strauss also composed a "Romance for Cello and Orchestra" in the same year, 1883). In the Finale, Strauss draws inspiration from Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony and Wagner's "Parsifal" (which he had heard in Bayreuth). In addition, the movement reveals some unmistakably Straussian characteristics, including a cadence that foreshadows his own "Elektra", written fifteen years later.

The F Major Cello Sonata was written for the Czech cellist, Hans Wihan, who gave the first performance in Nürnberg on the 8th of December, 1883. (Twelve years later, Wihan was the dedicatee of Dvorák's Cello Concerto). The Dresden premiere of the sonata took place two weeks later, with the cellist Ferdinand Böckmann and Strauss himself at the piano, after which the composer reported proudly to his mother, "My Sonata pleased the audience greatly, and they applauded most enthusiastically. I was congratulated from all sides, and the cellist, Böckmann, reflected quite wonderfully in his playing how much he liked the work and plans to play it quite soon again in his concerts."

Robert Schumann (1810 -1856) Adagio and Allegro Op. 70

“The qualities of the violoncello are exactly those of the beloved dreamer whom we know as Schumann.” These words of Donald Tovey could not be more apt. In the ’cello Schumann found a perfect vehicle for the expression of his most profound musical thoughts. Having studied the instrument as a young man, he wrote for it with special sympathy in both his orchestral and chamber music. His love for the instrument is clearly demonstrated by the cello parts in all four of his symphonies, as well as in the concertos for piano and violin, and of course throughout his chamber music.

It is unfortunate that he knew no great ’cello virtuosi who might have inspired him to write many more works. As it is, we must be deeply grateful for what we have. The Fünf Stücke im Volkston (1849), the wonderful Cello Concerto (1850), Fantasiestücke Op. 73 (originally conceived for clarinet) and the Fünf Romanzen written late in 1853, a few months before his final breakdown. The Adagio and Allegro was written in 1849, originally written for horn and entitled Romanze and Allegro.

In 1849 Germany was in turmoil, the revolution against the monarchies that had begun a year earlier spread like wild-fire. The Schumanns, then living in Dresden, were in considerable peril. Republican soldiers came looking for Robert in order to conscript him into the army. Robert managed to hide and he, Clara and their eldest daughter escaped to a sanctuary out of town. Two days later, Clara—six months pregnant—returned to Dresden in the middle of the night, snatched the remaining three children from their beds and made a dramatic escape. It was all rather hair-raising. Later on Schumann reflected that he had been busy ‘…it seemed as if the outer storms impelled people to turn inward, and only there did I find a counterforce against the forces breaking in so from outside’. As Stephen Isserlis remarks, “…typical of Schumann—one gets the feeling that for him the outer world was always something of a threat; he preferred to live within his dreams.”

As always Schumann wrote quickly, a reverie into which, despite everything that had happened, nothing harsh or threatening from outside was permitted to intrude. The Adagio and Allegro is a welcome addition to the cello repertoire because it was originally written for horn and piano but was re-arranged with the composers approval for piano and ’cello by the well-known ’cellist Frederick Grutsmacher. Indeed the piece is very well suited to the character of the ’cello and is probably better known in this version. The Adagio has a long, gently meandering ‘cantabile’ line, a love song unfolding and opening out before coming to complete stop, in peace. There is a pause followed by an ecstatic outburst of happiness.