The sonata for cello and piano, composed in 1948, has been described by Richard Franko Goldman as "one of those rare works that tempt one to extremes of praise.  It is a mature and distinctive work of an original, responsible, serious and adult composer whose gifts have not been fully understood or widely appreciated.  One senses on first hearing that the cello sonata is far above the common run of contemporary premieres; it is a happy confirmation of the quality of all of Carter’s recent work and a happier augury for the future, for it seems to mark the full emergence of a deeply conscious, personal style and the final subordination of great interpersonal style and the final subordination of great ingenuity to equally great expressiveness.' The composer has written the following about the sonata:

"In the sonata for cello and piano I was concerned with idiomatic writing and tried to establish various musical characters and to choose musical material especially suited to the medium.  Although throughout the cello is given prominence over the piano, the instruments are combined in a different way in each movement.  While composing the music during the summer of 1948 in Dorset, Vermont, I thought of a procedure incorporated in this sonata that is, as far as I know, original.  It has been called ‘metric modulation’ by Richard Goldman in the article mentioned above and it consists in the coordination of all the tempi of the work and their interrelation by notated changes of speed.  This device becomes most prominent in the course of the third and fourth movements but each movement is related to the one immediately preceding it by the carrying over of a motive played at the same speed. The carryover can be most clearly heard when the fast oscillating motion of quintuplets played by the piano in the background of the middle and end of the second movement is taken up at the same speed with an entirely different meaning as a motive of the opening theme in the cello at the beginning of the third movement.  The large circle of speed changes is completed when the sonata concludes by returning at the very end to the speed of the first movement.'