Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Magicbowls
The cello The cello is the most human of instruments. Even physically, one's relationship to it is somehow similar to a singer's with his or her voice; the cello seems to become part of one's body, as one hugs it close and coaxes mellow sounds from it.
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Read More »As a cellist, I suffer a lot, and a large proportion of my sufferings are caused by the remarks I have to endure on an all-too-frequent basis. I now have a T-shirt with text that deals with some of the most prevalent: "It's a cello, not a guitar," the shirt announces. "Yes, I have to buy a seat for it on the plane. No, I don't wish I'd taken up the flute. No, I'm not going to give you a tune." And so on. It is particularly useful at airports – instead of answering the usual inane queries, I just point to the relevant line. But there is one remark that has come my way countless times over the years that I actually enjoy: "The cello is my favourite instrument," people tell me. "Mine too," is my rather obvious response. But then they often follow up with another remark with which I also have to agree: "It's the instrument most like a human voice." It's so true (even though the cello has a larger range than any voice, of course – ha!). The cello is the most human of instruments. Even physically, one's relationship to it is somehow similar to a singer's with his or her voice; the cello seems to become part of one's body, as one hugs it close and coaxes mellow sounds from it. Despite these similarities, however, it is surprising how few composers have combined the voice and the cello in major works. The cello intertwines so naturally with any voice-type that one would expect to find a host of song-cycles involving cello "obbligato". But no – apart from baroque cantatas (in which the cello generally provides a bassline rather than an equal partnership), they are comparatively few and far between. Shostakovich uses the cello very powerfully in his tragic masterpiece, Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok for soprano and piano trio, while Ravel produces magical sounds in his Chansons Madécasses for soprano, flute, cello and piano; but these are exceptions. So amassing a large body of works combining voice and cello has not been easy; but after greedily pouncing on everything I could find for many years, I now have an intriguing collection. There are some little-known gems: Berlioz's gorgeous La Captive, for instance – all the rage in its day, but rarely heard today. Borodin's Razlyubila Krasna Devitsa (The Pretty Girl No Longer Loves Me) is another fascinating rarity; Borodin played the cello, and understood how to make it speak Russian. There are also justified transcriptions that are a treat for the cellist. Schubert's Auf dem Strom is a song for tenor normally performed with horn obbligato, but at the memorial service for Schubert arranged by his friends in 1829, it was performed instead with cello (played by Linke, the cellist who worked extensively with Schubert and Beethoven – why didn't he write an autobiography?) So we can feel guilt-free if we borrow this sublime song. As my collection grew, I conceived the idea of a series of concerts. The more I thought about it, the more promising it seemed. I realised there would have to be three separate events, involving three different kinds of voices: one a soprano delighting in French lyricism, one with a darker soprano voice suitable for Russian music, and one with a tenor specialising in both baroque music and lieder. Luckily for me, the director of the Wigmore Hall, John Gilhooly, is sympathetic to unusual ideas, and since most of my programming suggestions tend to be off-the-wall – in fact, I consider it something of a duty to present little-known works – he encourages me. These programmes were particularly challenging to put together. Even though I was allowed to add an extra instrument (in addition to the piano) to each concert – flute to the French evening, violin to the Russian, and harpsichord to the one with a tenor – it would have been hard to fill three evenings with truly worthwhile music had we not decided to include cello sonatas that treated the cello like a voice and, conversely, songs that treat the voice like an instrument. But once we had added works such as Prokofiev's late cello sonata (full of folk-style melodies and written as a riposte after he had been put on trial by the Stalin regime for writing music that ignored the spirit of the Russian people), and songs such as Faure's Mandoline, we were nearly there. Finally, we added a contemporary work to each concert – with the proviso that it must be connected to the rest of the evening's repertoire. For the Russian programme this was no problem, since Sir John Tavener had many years ago written his touching Akhmatova songs for Patricia Rozario and me; for the programme with tenor, which was to include some Purcell songs, including Mad Bess, we decided to include Tom O'Bedlam, Richard Rodney Bennett's extraordinary portrait of snivelling madness for tenor and cello. For the French programme, though, I was stumped – until I remembered seeing a fascinating-looking volume of poetry written by Saint-Saëns, no less. I asked my friend, the marvellous young (well, younger than me, so that means young) composer James Francis Brown if he would take a look at the poems. He did so, and came back with the good news that he'd found three that he thought eminently suited to musical settings. So he has composed a masterly little suite for soprano, flute, cello and piano, written in a distinctively French idiom without sounding like pastiche. That was a worry of his – but then, in true composer-style, he worries about every note he writes.
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Read More »Having planned the programmes, the final, very important, question was which singers I should ask to take part. Mark Padmore was always going to be there, since we have been in constant musical contact since we realised a shared dream together: a performance (at the Cheltenham festival) of Bach's St Matthew Passion with an orchestra and collection of soloists made up of our friends. For the French evening, both John Gilhooly and I thought of Lucy Crowe. I was first introduced to Lucy by the pianist Graham Johnson, who suggested her for an evening at the Wigmore in which we were trying to recreate the spirit of a musical soiree in Saint-Saëns's Paris. She sang some flirtatious songs that night – so seductively that at the rehearsal I asked her to tone it down a bit, since I was worried that my father, then in his mid-80s, would have a heart attack. (He's now in his mid-90s, and will be coming to the French concert, but the songs in this programme are a little purer in tone, I'm happy to say, so we're safe.) The Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, who is the soprano in the Russian programme, was suggested by John. I have met her only briefly, but I've heard great things about her. And so – finally – the series is going to happen. I'm looking forward to it enormously, and my cello is, too.
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The Voice and Cello series begins at the Wigmore Hall, London, on 1 November, then on 3 and 11 November. Details: wigmore-hall.org.uk
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