By Lucy Caplan
Lucy Caplan is assistant professor of music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the author of Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera. In 2026-2027, she is the Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Many concert programs today follow a certain set of conventions. There will be three or four complete works, most of which were written long ago, with perhaps one more recent piece. The composers’ names will generally be familiar. There will be an intermission after the second piece, and then we will settle back into our seats for a longer final treat. This programming strategy—which often works beautifully—exemplifies the completist, canonical mindset that drives much of classical music culture today.
Yet this is not the only option. Not too long ago, concert programs tended to be far more eclectic, merging old favorites with newer sounds currently in vogue. This evening’s program harkens back to that model. Rather than featuring contemporary music by living composers, it transforms the past into a potpourri, curating a selection of movements from longer pieces rather than insisting upon completeness for its own sake. It’s interesting to note that even as this strategy echoes past approaches to programming, it also mirrors the way that listeners often encounter music in our own age of streaming platforms: hitting “play” on favorite tracks again and again, rather than listening to entire albums in one go. When we listen to more works in programmatic conversation with one another, as this program invites us to do, new senses of connection might emerge. Most fundamentally, though, it’s a reminder that there is no one right way to listen to the music we love.
Francis Poulenc, Suite française, FP 80 (1935; arr. for cello and piano 1953)
Neoclassical composition was all the rage in interwar Europe, as composers from Igor Stravinsky to Paul Hindemith looked back to the elegant forms and precise rhythms of an earlier age. Poulenc’s Suite française exemplifies the trend, using dances by the sixteenth-century musician Claude Gervaise as the basis of a new work. Originally written as incidental music for a play, for a small orchestra of winds, percussion, and harpsichord, the suite was later arranged for cello and piano. Its seven short movements—which range from the upbeat opening Bransle de Bourgogne to a dignified Sicilienne—refract centuries-old tunes through spiky modern harmonies, creating a sonic world that hovers somewhere between past and present.
Johannes Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38 (1862–65)
Much like Poulenc’s Suite, Brahms’ Cello Sonata glances backward. Direct and indirect references to earlier works abound: a theme reminiscent of Beethoven’s A Major Cello Sonata in the second movement, a near-exact quotation from Bach’s “Art of the Fugue” in the third. Given that this work was Brahms’s first duo sonata, these gestures come across as a fairly bold way for the young composer to position himself as a natural successor to these esteemed composers. The first movement, anchored by the recurring melodic figure of a rising minor sixth, is expansive, comprising nearly half of the work’s duration. The waltz-like second movement has a reserved delicacy, while the third is resolutely old-fashioned. Its sonata form is inflected with fugal elements, and piano and cello engage in a vivid contrapuntal dialogue which never loses its sense of propulsive energy.
Alban Berg, Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5 (1913) (arr. Queyras/Tharaud)
Berg’s “little pieces” make the miniatures of the nineteenth century seem extravagant by comparison: each piece lasts barely a minute or two, in line with a broader modernist vogue for prizing the fragmentary over the grand or synthetic. These pieces—which were originally written for clarinet and piano—also seem to have exposed some interpersonal tensions, with Berg’s mentor Arnold Schoenberg harshly critiquing his student’s work. The first piece is jittery, never settling into a consistent tempo, while the second is a calmer respite. The third begins and ends with whispery murmurs, and the set concludes with a foray into haunting lyricism.
Franz Schubert, Adagio from Arpeggione Sonata in A Minor, D. 821 (1824)
Turn a guitar ninety degrees counterclockwise, neck stretching upward, and you would have something like the arpeggione: an early nineteenth-century instrument, held like a cello, which features a six-string fretted fingerboard and is played with a bow. The arpeggione’s vogue was short-lived, but it was sufficiently popular in its day for Schubert to write a sonata for it. The work outlasted the instrument, thanks to popular transcriptions for viola and cello. This movement makes it easy to see why. It evokes the ethereal stillness characteristic of Schubert’s most beloved slow movements (the Cello Quintet comes to mind in particular), its sense of transcendence heightened by its celestial E-major tonality. An inexplicably simple melody wanders up and down above a tranquil accompaniment, elegant ornamentation guiding its gentle motion and perpetual return to its tonal home.
Benjamin Britten, from Sonata in C for Cello and Piano Op. 65 (1961)
I. Dialogo. Allegro
V. Moto Perpetuo. Presto
Upon their very first meeting, the celebrated cellist Mstislav Rostropovich invited Benjamin Britten to write a piece for him. Just a few months later, Britten sent along the score for this sonata, which quickly met with its dedicatee’s approval—Rostropovich pronounced himself “admiring and in love with your great sonata.” The good feelings continued when the two met to play through the work, offering a remarkable example of interpersonal cooperation against the backdrop of Cold War politics. The sonata’s first movement, aptly titled “Dialogo,” moves from an almost hesitant beginning—the cello chiming in for just one quarter note in each measure—to an adventurous interplay between the two instruments, brief lyrical fragments sharing space with atmospheric harmonics and high-energy sequences. The final movement is a brief but powerful Moto Perpetuo which stays mostly pianissimo and piano, bouncing with anticipatory energy before finally dashing to the finish.
Marin Marais, Prélude from Suite in D Minor (Pièces de viole, Livre II) (1701)
A renowned performer on the viol as well as a prolific composer, Marin Marais was a key figure of the French Baroque. He wrote close to six hundred works for his instrument, arranged in a series of books—what amounts to hundreds of hours of music. Marais had a rather freewheeling approach to composition, indicating in these book’s prefaces that the pieces could be adapted for various instruments and played in various orders. Flexibility was the name of the game, and performers were encouraged to take an active creative role. This Prélude has an improvisatory feel, wandering unhurriedly from gesture to gesture and luxuriating in the richness of its minor-key tonality.
Claude Debussy, Prologue. Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto from Sonata for Cello and Piano, L. 135 (1915): (arr. Léon Roques)
Composed just two years after the spare Berg pieces featured earlier on this program, Debussy’s sonata seems to emerge from a wholly different musical universe. It is abundantly emotional and musically omnivorous, borrowing from blues harmonies, dance rhythms, and Romantic expressivity. Indeed, at this point in his life Debussy was skeptical of the austere sounds coming out of the Second Viennese School, writing in a 1915 letter to a friend, “This power of the right chord in the right place that strikes you…we are still in the age of harmonic progressions, and people who are happy just with beauty of sound are hard to find.” But Debussy’s conception of “beauty of sound” was far from old-fashioned, drawing concomitantly on French Baroque gesture and new “special effects” like harmonics. This Prologue features grand, intricately ornamented melodies in both instruments. Its middle section makes captivating use of tiny melodic building blocks, constructing a sense of scale through the repetition of simple figures.
Gabriel Fauré, Sicilienne, Op. 78 & Papillon, Op. 77 (1898)
Gabriel Fauré enjoyed international acclaim by the 1890s, and these pieces were published simultaneously in France and England, reflecting his eminent stature. The Sicilienne—which, like the Poulenc piece earlier on this program, was originally composed as incidental music for a play—is elegant and old-fashioned, its 6/8 meter flowing along with placid tranquility. Far more virtuosic is Papillon, which was likely written more than a decade earlier but got lost in the mire of publication delays. Quicksilver passagework alternates with more melodic passages, inviting the cellist to showcase technical chops as well as emotional expressivity.
Johannes Brahms, Hungarian Dances Nos. 1 in G Minor, 5 in F-sharp Minor, & 7 in A Major, WoO 1 (1868) (arr. Queyras/Tharaud)
Brahms’s much-loved Hungarian Dances endure for their memorable melodies and catchy rhythmic patterns. Written after the composer toured with Hungarian Ede Reményi, they manage to be both charming and robust. Their moods are unpredictable, turning on a dime from serene to tempestuous. Within this set, Dance No. 1 embodies Brahms’ mastery of rich harmonies, while Dance No. 7 stands out for its playful elegance.
