Barber’s Cello Sonata: Echoes of Brahms
Imagine the kind of music Johannes Brahms might have written had he lived into the twentieth century. Chances are good that it might have sounded something like Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata, Op. 6. The Sonata’s harmonic language is firmly rooted in the twentieth century, even as it renounces the prevailing twelve tone atonality in favor of C minor. At the same time, its melodic construction, deep, rich piano voicing, and Romantic pathos …