Mozart Piano Sonatas: Transcribed For Cello

Here you will find a selection of Mozart‘s Piano Sonatas in versions (adaptations, transcriptions) for cello + simple accompaniment (or for cello duo). These Sonatas offer some wonderful opportunities for “theft”, and, surprisingly it is not only the beautiful slow movements that we can successfully adapt to the cello.

1. K310 in A Minor
2.          K331 in A Major (including Rondo Alla Turca)
3.          K332 in F Major

1. K333 in Bb Major
2.          K545 in C Major
3.          K576 in D Major

The biggest problem with making cello transcriptions of these amazing pieces (and piano music in general) is working out the accompaniments. When we take the melodic line out of a Mozart piano sonata and give it to the cello, the accompaniment that is left is normally quite sparse and simple as it is mainly just the left hand of the original piano sonata with only the occasional countermelody or harmony notes in the right hand. These skeletal accompaniments have the advantage that they can be adapted to many different instruments or ensembles but they are definitely too simple for an accomplished pianist, who might not only be bored at having to take such a minor role but also offended at having to accompany the thief who stole their beautiful piece from them.

Because of the polyphonic simplicity and sparse textures of our accompaniment scores, we might think that they would be best suited to guitar or harp. This is certainly true for the slow movements, which sound magnificent on the harp, but in the faster first and third movements’ accompaniment lines (normally the piano’s left hand) there are very often some fast articulated passages which may be impossible or very difficult on those plucked instruments. If we therefore exclude the harp and guitar for these outer, faster movements, we have several alternatives for making an effective accompaniment:

• we can add notes to the treble stave (pianist’s right hand) to complete the harmonies and enrich the texture, thus making a more complete accompaniment part for a piano (or for any available instrumental ensemble)
• or we can remove even more of the harmony notes and play the accompaniments on a second cello. Doublestops in the bass lines tend to “muddy the waters”, obscuring the harmonies rather than enriching them and it appears that the more doublestops we remove from these accompaniment parts, the better they sound. This makes them suitable to be played also by a bassoon. Even though this “thinning-out” process requires removing some of the harmonies and/or counter-melodies, the gain in transparency and clarity of texture is much greater than the loss of the additional harmony notes. It appears that our ears tend to imagine these “missing elements” without any problem.

It is a revelation to discover how successfully many of the faster movements can be converted into cello duos although the frequent Alberti bass lines that sound so great on keyboard instruments will often need to be modified. Perfectly designed for keyboard instruments, Alberti basses (especially the faster ones) are normally much less well suited to the cello. One (or two) octaves higher they would be much easier to play as we could use the thumb but using the thumb is much less practical in the lower registers.

Fortunately, however, finding an alternative accompaniment is usually not as difficult or as disruptive as we might have feared. In the above example, we can simply remove the slur and play the notes in first position, starting upbow to facilitate the string crossing and using the open string. Below are some more examples of fast Alberti basslines from Mozart’s Piano Sonatas that may benefit from modifications to adapt them to the cello.

Lacking the pianistic knowledge necessary to competently fill out the piano parts, the cellofun.eu accompaniments to these sonatas are normally offered in the following two simplest versions:

• a simple, skeletal keyboard version consisting simply of Mozart’s original sonata but with the removal of all of the melodic notes that have been given to the “solo” cello. Although written out on a double-stave as though for a keyboard, the right hand is normally quite empty because almost all of its notes have been given to the cello. These simple accompaniments can be arranged/played by many different instruments or ensembles.
• a version for a second cello, converting each sonata into a cello duo.