The Brahms F major is my favourite of all the cello sonatas. It runs the gamut of human emotions, from sadness and despair to great joy, as well as inner peace and tranquillity. In Brahms’s works there’s always a sense of wisdom and balance, but I thinkthe put in everythingthe knew into this piece, and it became a statement of deep personal meaning. For me, it’s diferent every time I come back to it. Like a great novel by Dostoevsky, I always ind more layers of understanding, with the emotions and sentiments articulated in a deeper way. I know that it relects how I see myself, and that I’m a slightly diferent person each time. It’s comforting whenever I go back to it, as it now feels like an old friend I’ve known for a very long time and can talk to. It’s alsothelped me through some diicult times.
I can’t remember when I irsttheard the sonata, but I do remember practising it for the irst time – I couldn’t make a connection with it.there were some moments, such as the opening, that I could understand, but for the most part I was grappling to feel the pulse in the music.the trouble was that it starts with a series of short, jagged thematic gestures, which form a kind of larger line. hat wasn’t what I was used to when I started practising it, and because it was hard to feel the music, I found it hard to play. As I’ve become older and found more reference points in life and art, it’s opened itself up to me, and I can believe I now have an idea of what Brahms was getting at.