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Mozart Piano Sonata in A Minor K310: Transcribed for Cello

When we look through a catalogue of Mozart‘s famous Piano Sonatas this is one of the very few that are in a minor key. It is also one of the few for which the cellofun transcription is in the original key, which means that some complex passages lie quite high.

FIRST MOVEMENT

Here is an audio of this movement played on the piano by Walter Klien:

 

What an extraordinary movement this is ! The suffering, torment, rage, anguish and grief that are expressed from the very first bars have more in common with music of the Romantic Period than with the lightness, restraint, charm and delight so associated with Mozart’s Classical Period. The dissonance of the second and fourth bars, for example, would even seem to have more in common with 20th-century note clusters than with any concept of traditional harmony. In what would normally be a dominant 7th chord on E (with E, G#,B and D), Mozart has added an A, which creates a dissonance that is like a knife thrust to the heart. Here is how the sonata begins:

The reason for this astonishing outpouring of grief becomes immediately clear when we discover that this sonata was written in the days immediately following the sudden, unexpected death of Mozart’s mother in 1778.

Whereas the “rule of the Classical Period grace note” states that “a grace note should be half the length of the note that it precedes”, the pain and torment of the opening of this movement seems to require a wild, agonised fast grace note, rather than something graceful, elegant and decorative. This is why we have written out the first notes (grace notes in Mozart’s original notation) of bars 1, 2 and 4 (and every repetition of this figure) as 16th notes rather than the academically correct 8th notes.

  1. Edited Version
  2.      Clean Version
  3.      Easier Version
  4.      Accompaniment Score
  1. Score For Cello Duo Arrangement
  2.       Accompaniment Part For Second Cello
  1. Engraving Files
Here are two play-along accompaniment audios. The first is at a slower, practice tempo. A one-bar introduction has been added to both so that we can know when to start:

 

SECOND MOVEMENT: Andante Cantabile Con Espressione
Like the first movement, this is deeply expressive, intensely emotional music. It is a curious experiment to play it first without having any of Mozart’s dynamics in the part. These are not at all what we might imagine and our attempts to guess them might often be the opposite of what Mozart wrote. The surprising dynamics do however make perfect sense when we remember that Mozart’s mother had just died unexpectedly. The many extreme and sudden alternations between forte and piano would seem to reflect a state of grief, with its alternations between sorrow and rage.