Two Cellists, One Departed

Had I been unfair? Had my adolescence so colored my judgment that I had completely misread her? Because the one time I attended a master class with the Canadian cellist Zara Nelsova, I came away convinced: the woman was a dragon.

She was, certainly, a hell of a cellist. Everybody said the same thing: she played like a man. And she had a technique that few could match, the result of natural talent augmented by six hours of practice every day, starting at the age of six. And she attributed much of her success to what she called “long bowing.”

Professional secret—a string player’s success or failure is 90% due to the bow, and how much control the player has over it. And yes, the left hand flying over the fingerboard is important, but what actually makes the sound? The right hand, forearm, and arm.

So the game she had with her flutist father was to see—who could hold a note the longest? Was her bow longer—figuratively—than his breath? And could she maintain the sound absolutely unbroken? Later, the game got expanded: could she start out at the frog of the bow, where the weight of the arm is the heaviest, with the quietest sound possible, and increase it evenly as she moved to the tip of the bow, where the weight of the arm is the lightest? Then, of course, she reversed it—starting out at the tip playing loudly, and decrescendoing as she moved to the frog.

Right—a picture being worth more, certainly, than the words above, here’s an illustration:

Not quite sure what all that’s about? Well, whether you understood it or not, there was no mistaking it: Nelsova’s playing was titanic. Everybody, she owned one of the best pieces of the 20^th century repertoire, Bloch’s Schelomo; she had studied it with the composer, who invited her to premiere it and then record it.

So she was major, but she was also—to my young eyes—a thorough bitch. Because there are musicians who believe in the musical equivalent of the stress interview, which, if you don’t know it, goes something like this:

Boss (smoking largest cigar possible, ignores job candidate for two minutes, and then shouts): WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT!

Job seeker: Um, ah, well…I’m here to apply…

Boss: WHY THE HELL SHOULD I GIVE YOU A JOB IN MY COMPANY!

Nelsova started out light on the youngest students, and got progressively meaner on the more advanced. Finally she pounced on one hapless grad student, who was to play the Prokofiev Sonata.

“JASON!” she kept on crying, as he struggled to play for more than 10 seconds, only to be interrupted by…

“JASON!”

It went on and on, until it became the musical equivalent of dog training.

“You must listen, listen, listen!” she instructed, when she felt that he was playing too loudly, and that the pianist had the more interesting part. So it was fascinating to see her performance the next day, when she came sweeping in in a majestic gown bedecked by pink ribbon; trailing her was her accompanist from central casting, a small, thin, nervous man who appeared terrified of the figure with whom he shared the stage. He never played louder than a mezzo piano all evening, even when he had one of the most ravishing themes Brahms ever wrote. Nelsova, not to be outshone, plucked out the pizzicato accompaniment at full volume.

She had, in short, an ego on steroids, and she must have felt—and you get a hint of this in the last minutes of the clip below—that her job was to toughen ‘em up, throw a barrage of criticism at the kids, season them before they faced the annealing fire. It was the prevailing attitude of her generation: watch Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the famed soprano of the same era, and you’ll see much the same thing.

You were supposed to be tough, you were supposed to be able to take in the criticism, accept it, and believe in yourself enough to withstand what felt like the Nazis marching through Poland. Because when you left the conservatory? Well, there are very few people wearing kid gloves in the world of classical music.

It took me several decades before I got that, and began at last to face up to one of the particularly challenging tasks for a cellist: stepping in front of an audience with nothing and nobody backing you up, and playing solo; here’s what one critic has to say about it:

Four of the five works on his program were written for unaccompanied cello. It takes a lot of (ahem) pluck to play this kind of music. Every note is sorely exposed. There’s no piano accompaniment to hide behind. It’s the musical equivalent of walking a tightrope without a safety net.    

And who is the critic talking about?

Michael Samis, a wonderful young cellist who stumbled upon an unknown cello concerto by the German composer Carl Reinecke, performed it, and had the dream of recording it. So he started a Kickstarter campaign, got the $8500 that he needed, and embarked on the long process of recording the work on the Delos label.

I had pledged some money, and then had waited, checking in periodically on Michael via Facebook. Nor was I surprised when Michael’s dream took longer than—seemingly—expected, because dreams do. Mine had, and at last I had had my book in my hands; a couple weeks ago, I had Michael’s dream in my hands. A CD, you see, is sometimes something more than a piece of plastic enclosed in other pieces of plastic.

The concerto was everything the excerpt had promised: lyrical, virtuosic, and lush. And then we came to a remarkable piece for solo cello: the Bloch Prelude Number One. Michael was treading on Nelsova’s turf, but why not? She had died a decade before, in New York City, where she had taught at Juilliard up until her death: somebody has to carry on the baton….

And curiously, Michael seems to be the guy to do it—the technique is there, but so is the big, beautiful, lush tone, and the temperament to be unabashedly romantic. It’s curiously refreshing, in an age of increasingly safe, correct performance practice, to hear somebody with a musical personality.

So the verdict is definitely in on Michael. But Nelsova?

…still not sure.

A Great Concerto Grosso

All right—let’s get the players straight. In the clip below, you have three groups of people. On the left will be a baroque flute and violin—and they’re the soloists. Next up are the cello and the harpsichord. The cello is playing at times the basso continuo, which for any less complicated composer / thinker than Bach, would be simple chords that provided the harmonic structure. But here Bach has the cello constantly shifting back and forth from the traditional role to one of almost soloist status. The cellist who doesn’t itch to play these parts is dead.

The continuo, by the way, is often left unspecified by baroque composers—whatever bass instrument came along could be used. Nor was the part frequently written out; like jazz musicians today, there was a complicated notation of numbers denoting notes based on the bass note. Sounds complicated? Initially it is, but after a bit, it starts to feel natural. Here, by the way, is what it looks like….

The other part of the basso continuo is the harpsichord, or really, any other keyboard or strummed instrument (The theorbo makes a really good one). And in this concerto, the Brandenburg 5, the harpsichord is given what some have called the first modern cadenza. It’s the long, showy solo at the end of the first movement. The cadenza, designed to showcase the virtuosity of the soloist, is also meant to fool around with the main themes of the movement—it’s all a showy rehash.

And this cadenza is spectacular—I’ve heard knowledgeable folk argue that it shouldn’t be played on the harpsichord at all. It’s so far ahead of its time, the thinking goes, that the piano is better suited to bring out all the nuances. Bach was writing for an instrument that didn’t exist. (Don’t please, argue this point with anyone connected to what is now being called HIP—historically informed performance.)

OK—you have on the left two soloists; in the center is the harpsichord and the cellist, who are both soloists and basso continuo; so who’s on the right? Well, it’s a little group called the ripieno—yes, computer, there are words you don’t know—who join in and form an “orchestral” backdrop. In this case, you have a violin, viola, and bass.

Bach wrote this concerto in 1719, and dedicated it to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Here, should you ever need an example of a dedication that goes from fulsome straight into brownnose, is the dedication:

As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness, at Your Highness's commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking Leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honour me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with Your Highness's most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him.[3][4]

All right—be fair. It was the style of the time.

And it also has to be said—this is a terrific piece of music. Yes, it may be a warhorse, a piece that is played so often it stops sounding new. Then, the curious thing happens—people shun the work because it seems trite, or overplayed. And then, of course, you go years without sitting down to listen to it again. And then when you hear it, you’re amazed—what were you doing all this time, listening to perfectly good though obscure music but neglecting a masterpiece?

Well, fortunately we have YouTube, which spies on me and then makes suggestions (I know, I should be upset and I’m not…). So when they suggested that I listen to the Croatian Baroque Ensemble playing the Brandenburg 5^th, I thought, ‘why not?’  Nor was I disappointed—they’re a knockout.    

I may have shot myself in the musical foot, by starting out with Bach—what else do you play after that?

Well, Corelli came to mind, and he wrote, in the good Baroque manner, a set of twelve of the little guys, written in the 1690’s but published in 1714—almost exactly at the time of Bach’s Brandenburgs. And they are as clean and fresh three hundred year later as the day Corelli wrote them. One of them gets trotted out regularly at Christmas—it even bears the name “Christmas Concerto.” The name was given by Corelli himself: Fatto per la notte di Natale ("Made for the night of Christmas").

It’s serenic—all right, not a word, but you know what I mean—music punctuated by gleeful, almost manic, sections. And check the guy playing what looks like a weird guitar or lute; that’s a theorbo.

Handel wrote two sets of concerti grossi—and composed them in 1739. Yes, they’re conventional—there’s nothing as thought-out as Bach, nor really as fresh as Corelli. But still, Handel on an off day is still Handel.

After the baroque era, everybody went off to compose other things, until, in the twentieth century, the form was rediscovered. Ernest Bloch composed one in 1925 in Cleveland Ohio. To me, it’s bombastic and unpleasant music; but interesting to listen to. Stravinsky, more notably, composed Dumbarton Oaks in 1937—and the main theme of the first movement is a direct reference to the Third Brandenburg Concerto. Lastly, Vaughan Williams composed a concerto grosso in 1950. Here they all are….