From Alyssa

The other thing I noticed, even before Sandra and I read through the sonata, was that it was Opus 1.

Opus 1 was for piano and cello???  Most composers don't even attempt writing for cello and piano until later in their career (and those who don't probably should).  It's a notoriously difficult duo to compose for, with inexperienced attempts often causing the piano to drown out the cello.  I've also spent much of my own career coaching piano-playing composers, having to teach them the difference between writing for piano and string instruments, or how a cellist would interpret certain notations differently than a pianist, etc.

As we started to read through, I was anticipating some of the common “rookie” pitfalls – after all, we knew from what we could find online that Kashperova had been a pianist, so surely there would be issues.  I mean, it sounded like she was recognized as a great composer in her time, but starting off with a cello sonata would be a naive mistake, no?

NO.

On first reading I was struck with how WELL this was written for cello.  The faster passages were all “under the hand”, the bowings all made sense (even though I, mistakenly, changed some of them at first – more on that later), she really knew her way around the difference in sonorities between the “wolf tones” and the notes that would ring, and most importantly, she didn't have the cello stuck in the middle of “piano soup” in a single passage.

I was gobsmacked.  This was not just the best first attempt at writing for cello and piano I had ever experienced, it was up there with the best, PERIOD, writing for cello and piano I had ever experienced.  AND THIS WAS HER FIRST ATTEMPT?!?!?

Later, when reading her memoirs, and becoming convinced she'd had more than a teensy crush on the sonatas' dedicatee, Monsieur Wierzbilovicz, I initially assumed she'd just been watching him ever-so-closely for some time, developing an… ahem… intimate knowledge of his playing.  But then I read others' descriptions of writing for other instruments, and realized that she wrote this well for ALL instruments and their various idiosyncrasies.  She knew them all so well, and wrote for them all so well.

Still, if this was Opus 1, No.1, I can only imagine what her later writing must have been like!

As we got to know the piece better, and many of my other assumptions were proven wrong, I realized just how well she understood the instrument, and the ways in which she played with bowings, fingerings and tonalities.  I'll get more “into the weeds” about that later.

(I'm still convinced of the crush on Monsieur Wierzbilovicz, but will also cover that at another time.  😀)