Onslow: Chamber Music by a Forgotten Master

Nobody remembers Georges Onslow. That’s the problem, and also, in a strange way, the point.

He was born in 1784 into circumstances that even now raise an eyebrow — his father, an English aristocrat, had been expelled from Parliament following a homosexual scandal, decamped to France, married money, and set about demonstrating his heterosexual credentials with some efficiency. Young Georges grew up bilingual, bicultural, and musically ambitious, eventually studying with Reicha in Paris and spending a career that straddled two worlds without quite belonging to either. The French found him too Germanic; the Germans found him — well, French. He was elected to the Institut de France over Berlioz, which tells you something about the Institut and something about Berlioz’s gift for making enemies. He died in 1853 having composed prolifically across chamber music — string quintets especially — and having been almost entirely forgotten before the dirt was settled over his grave.

What he left behind, though, deserves better than oblivion.

The three cello sonatas that make up op. 16, published in 1821, occupy a genuinely fascinating historical moment. Beethoven’s five cello sonatas — from the early pair of op. 5, written for the virtuoso Jean-Louis Duport, through the austere late miracle of the Sonata in C major, op. 102 no. 1 — were essentially the only serious precedents for treating cello and piano as genuine equals rather than melody-and-accompaniment. Onslow absorbed that lesson thoroughly. These are not salon pieces dressed up in serious clothing. The piano doesn’t merely accompany; it argues, interrupts, completes the cello’s sentences. What’s remarkable, given the date, is how naturally Onslow writes for the partnership — how little it costs him.

The Sonata in F, op. 16 no. 1, is the sunniest of the three, a work of real melodic generosity. Onslow distributes his tunes between the instruments with an easy-handedness that feels almost Schubertian — though in 1821 Schubert himself was still finding his way toward the late chamber masterpieces. The slow movement is the heart of it: long-breathed, unhurried, with the kind of vocal line that makes you realize how much these composers were thinking about the human voice even when no singer was present.

Then comes the C minor sonata, and everything changes. Thirty-one minutes of it — an epic by any chamber standard of the period — and Onslow earns every minute. The opening is stormy in the Beethovenian sense: the cello announces a genuinely troubled main theme, all forward momentum and harmonic unease. But the secondary material surprises you with its delicacy, its willingness to let the tension breathe. The movement marked “menuetto” is no minuet in any courtly sense — it’s a scherzo with its collar loosened and a dangerous look in its eye. The trio, though, is another matter entirely: tender, almost fragile, the kind of passage that makes you sit forward and listen harder. The finale’s coda, with the cello descending into its lowest register in something close to a growl, eventually resolves — of course it does, this is 1821, not 1921 — but the journey to that C major conclusion is not entirely comfortable.

The A major sonata, the third, is compact, lighter in weight and tone, almost playful. Until it isn’t. The finale arrives with a minor-key turn that lands like a cold hand on a warm shoulder — think of the way the last movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major suddenly remembers what the bass has been muttering all along. Same emotional mechanism, different composer, different instrument.

Maria Kliegel is a player who divides opinion — she has always played with a big, warm, vibrato-rich tone, and these are unabashedly romantic accounts of the sonatas. Listeners who want a cooler, more “period-informed” approach will find her lush. I find her persuasive. The C minor sonata especially needs that kind of commitment; played with restraint, it would merely be competent. Nina Tichman at the piano is consistently superb — precise without being metronomic, sensitive to the cello without ever becoming its shadow. The recorded sound serves both players honestly and places them in a believable acoustic relationship.

Is this the only available release of these sonatas? More or less. Which is itself an argument for owning it.

Onslow sat at the junction of late classicism and early romanticism — not quite Beethoven’s peer, not quite Schubert’s, but aware of both and capable of his own voice. These sonatas don’t rewrite history. But they add a room to the house, a room that turns out to be warmer and more interesting than you expected. That’s enough.