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M E L B O U R N E R E C I TA L C E N T R E P R E S E N T S
G R E AT P E R F O R M E R S
2014 CONCERT SERIES
ALISA
WEILERSTEIN
CELLO
TUESDAY 8 JULY 2014
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7.30PM
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Pre-concert talk by Svetlana Bogosavljevic
6.45pm-7.15pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
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This concert is being broadcast on
ABC Classic FM
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Duration: One hour and thirty minutes
including one 20-minute interval
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PROGRAM
ABOUT THE MUSIC
BENJAMIN BRITTEN (b. Lowestoft, UK, 1913 - d. Aldeburgh, UK, 1976)
Tema ‘Sacher’
An extraordinary harvest of works
grew out of Britten’s friendship with
Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich,
whom he had met, along with Dmitri
Shostakovich, in London in 1960. The
following year, Britten composed his
Sonata for Cello and Piano for his two
Russian friends.
OSVALDO GOLIJOV (b. La Plata, Argentina, 1960)
Omaramor
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (b. Eisenach, Germany 1685 - d. Leipzig, Germany, 1750)
Suite for Solo Cello in C major, BWV 1009
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourrée I and II
Gigue
INTERVAL: 20 MINUTES
ZOLTÁN KODÁLY (b. Kecskemét, Hungary, 1882 - d. Budapest, Hungary, 1967)
Sonata for Solo Cello, Op.8
Britten was, by 1976, seriously ill and
exhausted after the composition of
his final opera and musical testament,
Death in Venice. But the brevity of this
piece derives from the nature of its
commission. To celebrate the 70th
birthday of Swiss conductor Paul
Sacher, Rostropovich proposed a work
to which some of the many composers
supported by Sacher’s advocacy would
contribute. (Sacher’s connection with
Britten dated back to the mid-1950s,
and the early days of the Aldeburgh
Festival.) In the event, Britten
composed the theme, rather than a
variation, and 11 colleagues (including
Luciano Berio, Hans Werner Henze
and Witold Lutosławski) were to
There is no drop of golden sun in this
music, though; rather, it reflects the
bleak sound-world of the composer’s
late works. As at the soloist’s opening
of the Cello Symphony, the writing
uses powerful double-stops and
abrasive rhythmic gestures that
almost obsessively reiterate the
long-long-short-short motif that
spells the theme at the very start.
The prominent tritone (E flat - A)
and semitone (C - B) ensure that any
comforting diatonic harmony is absent.
Sacher, who had supported the work
of composers from Bartók to Wolfgang
Rihm, was an apostle of high
modernism, an aesthetic that in more
recent times has been confronted
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GRE AT PERFORMERS
Allegro maestoso ma appassionato
Adagio (con gran espressione)
Allegro molto vivace
In addition to the Sonata, Britten’s
music for Rostropovich includes his
massive Symphony for Cello and
Orchestra, three Suites for Solo Cello, a
song-cycle (Rostropovich also played
the piano) for the cellist’s wife,
soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and, at
the very end of his life, the minutelong Tema ‘Sacher’.
compose further variations on it.
In fact, Britten’s theme hardly lends
itself to traditional variation
technique: it does not contain an
immediately memorable melody,
nor more than one of the sort of
strongly-profiled rhythmic motifs
that composers could easily develop.
The other composers did, however,
follow Britten in the use of the letters
of Sacher’s name as the basis for their
work. In German nomenclature,
S-A-C-H-E ‘spells’ the notes E flat,
A, C, B natural, and E, and Britten
‘translates’ the final R as the second
degree of the scale: ‘re’, in sol-fa, or D,
in C major.
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ALISA WEILERSTEIN
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and perhaps modified by the
admission of elements from other,
notably vernacular, musical worlds.
The work of Argentinian-born
Osvaldo Golijov is a shining example
of this. Golijov grew up in an Eastern
European Jewish household in La
Plata, surrounded by classical
chamber music, klezmer and Jewish
liturgical music, and the ‘new tango’
of Ástor Piazzolla. He moved to Israel
to study in 1983, and to the United
States in 1986. In the early 90s Golijov
began to work closely with the St.
Lawrence and Kronos Quartets and
with artists such as Romanian Gypsy
band Taraf de Haidouks, Mexican
Rock group Café Tacuba, tablas
virtuoso Zakir Hussain, and legendary
Argentine composer, guitarist and
producer Gustavo Santaolalla. All of
these influences have contributed to
the richness of his musical language.
Carlos Gardel, the mythical tango
singer, was young, handsome, and at
the pinnacle of his popularity when
the plane that was carrying him to a
concert crashed and he died, in 1935.
But for all the people who are seated
today at the sidewalks in Buenos
Aires and listening to Gardel’s songs
in their radios, that accident is
irrelevant, because, they will tell
you, ‘Today Gardel is singing better
than yesterday, and tomorrow he’ll
sing better than today’.
In one of his perennial hits, My
Beloved Buenos Aires, Gardel sings:
Omaramor is a fantasy on My
Beloved Buenos Aires: the cello walks,
melancholy at times and rough at
others, over the harmonic progression
of the song, as if the chords were the
streets of the city. In the midst of this
wandering the melody of the
immortal song is unveiled. Omaramor
is dedicated to philanthropist and
producer Saville Ryan, ‘whose fire
transforms the world.’
The material may have its roots
in Argentinian folksong, but the
technique with which it is revealed
grows out of the tradition that
stretches back to Bach, whose six
Suites for Solo Cello are the Everest
of the solo cello repertoire. Golijov,
like Bach, creates a kind of ‘virtual
polyphony’ by the use of doublestopping and sudden shifts of register,
and in miniature, brings together
elements of song and dance.
Bach’s Suites are generally thought to
have been written during his tenure as
Kapellmeister at the court of AnhaltCöthen, a position he took up in 1717
and held until 1723. The composer had
seriously fallen out with his previous
employer at Weimar; at Cöthen, Bach
found in Prince Leopold a patron who
truly appreciated his genius, and who
was, himself, a skilled amateur
musician. Leopold’s family was,
moreover, Calvinist. The court
therefore had no use for liturgical
music of any kind, but secular music
was lavishly supported, so it was to
that that Bach devoted himself. We
know that the Prince’s music staff
included two highly regarded cellists,
Carl Friedrich Abel and Christoph
Bernhard Linke, either of whom might
have played the Suites.
Formally these are all ‘French suites’
with a fixed set of dance movements
introduced by a prelude. In this case,
the prelude gives the impression of an
impromptu flourish. Its extravagant
gestures contrast with the lighter
allemande and buoyant courante that
follow, where Bach’s use of style brisé,
that ‘virtual polyphony’ is clearly
evident as short phrases are
punctuated by emphatic sound of
the bass line. The stately pace of the
sarabande allows for a richer use of
resonant harmony. The penultimate
movements of each suite change
from pair to pair: Suites 1 and 2
contain menuets, 3 and 4, bourrées,
and 5 and 6, gavottes. Here, the
bourrée is presented with a double a contrasting, more ornately decorated
version of the dance, which, despite
its C major tonality, admits a certain
melancholy that is dispelled by the
final gigue.
British composer David Matthews,
who as a young man worked as an
assistant to Benjamin Britten, regards
the three Suites that Britten wrote for
Rostropovich as ‘the most important
solo cello music since Bach’. That may
be true, if a lay-down misere, as there
was actually very little solo cello music
written between Bach’s time and
Britten’s. But, of the few works by Max
Reger and others, the standout
masterpiece has to be the 1915 Sonata
by Hungarian composer Zoltán
Kodály. Kodály, along with his friend
and colleague Béla Bartók, was a
pioneer in recording and notating the
fast disappearing folk musics of
eastern Europe and beyond. In
addition, Kodály brought his
considerable intellect to bear on the
theory of music education, believing
that it was the duty of all schools to
expose young children to the ‘lifegiving stream of good music’ and
devising a method of teaching in use
world-wide. Kodály was no less
committed as a composer, using the
resources of folk music and Gregorian
chant to produce work that is
beautiful, well-crafted and integrated,
and though inevitably eclipsed by
Bartók, there was no rancour on either
side. Indeed Bartók, writing about
those of Kodály’s works composed
around the time of World War I,
graciously noted that:
His music is not of the kind
described nowadays as modern.
It has nothing to do with the new
atonal, bitonal and polytonal music
– everything in it is based on the
principle of tonal balance. His idiom
is nevertheless new; he says things
that have never been uttered before
and demonstrates thereby that the
tonal principle has not lost its raison
d’être as yet.
The Cello Sonata demonstrates that in
spades: playing for around 30 minutes
it creates a satisfying large-scale
structure, and offers a breathtaking
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GRE AT PERFORMERS
Composed in 1991, Omaramor is a
memorial piece, as the composer
explains:
‘The day I’ll see you again
My beloved Buenos Aires,
Oblivion will end,
There will be no more pain.’
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ALISA WEILERSTEIN
climbs slowly but inexorably, leading
to the movement’s highest note at its
quiet climax.
The expansive first movement
is marked Allegro maestoso ma
appassionato - that is, impassioned but
not overly fast. It begins and ends with
a resonant statement of the work’s
home key, B minor. One of Kodály’s
inspirations was to have the cello’s two
lowest strings tuned down a semitone
from the usual C and G to B and F
sharp. At that pitch, the strings can
ring out the two most important notes
of the B minor scale, providing clear
points of departure and return. Above
this rich foundation, Kodály offers
two contrasting thematic ideas: the
first is a simple tune that has a number
of Hungarian features, such as the
frequent stress on strong beats, and
the prominent interval of the falling
fourth; the second is much longerlimned, song-like melody. The
movement’s central episode is
in many respects a classical
development, where Kodály creates
his own form of ‘virtual polyphony’
with different ‘voices’ in different
parts of the cello’s compass, before the
music makes its way back to the solid
ground of the B minor opening.
Musicologist Steven Elisha recounts a
story told by one of the sonata’s
greatest advocates, Janos Starker.
Starker played the work in 1939 and,
even before the applause had stopped,
the composer told him: ‘First
movement too fast; second movement
OK; third, don’t separate too much the
variations. Good night.’ Starker admits
that until then he ‘hadn’t noticed that
there were variations!’ But indeed
there are, subtle though they be, based
on the simple folk-dance material, a
csárdás, no doubt, announced at the
movement’s start. This is put through
a dizzying array of sections, with
moods ranging from the gruff to the
radiant. One can forgive Starker for not
realising that there were variations
and yet for instinctively sensing that
the movement is the sum of many
highly distinctive, and always
thrilling, parts, such as the coda which
sweeps to the top of the instrument’s
register before, again, returning to
terra firma.
The slow movement is, like many of
Bartók’s, a nature piece (if not a night
piece). A series of dreamlike states is
evoked, most strikingly in those
passages where a melody, intricately
ornamented in the ‘Balkan’ style, is
accompanied by pizzicato, suggesting
perhaps a cimbalom, zither or guitar
accompanying a song. The tessitura
2014 CONCERT SERIES
The work was premiered by Jenö
Kerpely of the Waldbauer Quartet, an
ensemble who did inestimable service
to the music of Bartók and Kodály.
Bartók rightly saw the work as
affirming traditional tonality, and
elsewhere wrote that the composer
was expressing, ‘with the simplest
possible technical means, ideas that
are entirely original’.
© Gordon Kerry 2014
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
‘A young cellist whose emotionally resonant performances of both
traditional and contemporary music have earned her international
recognition, Weilerstein is a consummate performer, combining
technical precision with impassioned musicianship’ stated the
MacArthur Foundation when awarding Alisa Weilerstein the 2011
MacArthur Genius Grant Fellowship, which then prompted the New
York Times to respond: ‘Any fellowship that recognises the vibrancy
of an idealistic musician like Ms. Weilerstein deserves a salute from
everyone in classical music.’
In performances brimming with intensity, sensitivity and a
wholehearted immersion in each work she interprets, Weilerstein has
long proven herself to be in possession of a distinctive musical voice.
An exclusive recording artist for Decca Classics since 2010,
Weilerstein is the first cellist to be signed by the prestigious label in
more than 30 years.
This season, Weilerstein looks forward to giving the New York
premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Reflections on Narcissus under
the composer’s own direction during the New York Philharmonic’s
inaugural Biennial, collaborates with Jaap van Zweden and the
Chicago Symphony on Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante, makes her
debut with the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra, returns to
London’s Royal Festival Hall with Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth
Symphony, tours Europe playing Schumann with the Mannheim
Symphony Orchestra and Mozarteum Orchestra and reprises
Dvorák’s Concerto with Belohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic on a
European tour which includes a return visit to London’s BBC Proms.
Gordon Kerry lives on a hill in northeastern Victoria.
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array of often new technical devices
that expand the expressive palette
of the instrument enormously.
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In addition to serving as Artist-in-Residence with the Cincinnati
Symphony, Alisa has engagements with the Boston, Dallas,
Houston, San Francisco, and New Zealand symphonies as well as
the Israel Philharmonic. In recital, she appears at London’s
Wigmore Hall, Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre,
Aspen Music Festival and the Caramoor International Music
Festival, where she is the 2014 Artist-in-Residence. This summer
Weilerstein also makes a cameo appearance in the Hollywood
feature film, If I Stay starring award-winning actress, Chloë Grace
Moretz.
To launch her 2014-15 season, Weilerstein joins the Milwaukee
Symphony and Edo de Waart for the Elgar Concerto, which is
also the vehicle for upcoming engagements with the Cleveland
Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra,
the Stuttgart Symphony, the Netherlands Philharmonic and
Tokyo’s NHK Symphony. She plays Dvorák with the New York
Philharmonic and Christoph von Dohnányi, Haydn on a German
tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra; and Shostakovich
with England’s Hallé Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic and the
Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
A major career milestone for Weilerstein occurred when she played
the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Daniel
Barenboim in Oxford, England, for the orchestra’s 2010 European
Concert. Televised live to an audience of millions worldwide, the
concert was released on DVD by EuroArts, with The Guardian
declaring her performance ‘the most technically complete and
emotionally devastating performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto
that I have ever heard live.’
Born in 1982, Weilerstein discovered her love for the cello at just two
and a half years of age, when her grandmother assembled a makeshift
set of instruments from cereal boxes to entertain her while she was ill
with chicken pox. Although immediately drawn to the Rice Krispies
box cello, Weilerstein soon grew frustrated that it didn’t produce any
sound. After persuading her parents to buy her a real cello at the age
of four, she developed a natural affinity for the instrument and gave
her first public performance six months later. At 13, in October 1995,
she played Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for her Cleveland
Orchestra debut, and in March 1997 she made her first Carnegie Hall
appearance with the New York Youth Symphony. Alisa Weilerstein is
a graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of
Music, where she studied with Richard Weiss, the cellist also graduated
in May 2004 with a degree in History from Columbia University.
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GRE AT PERFORMERS
Next season’s recital highlights include appearances in Boston,
Aspen, and the Wigmore Hall, where Weilerstein will showcase
repertoire from Solo, her compilation of unaccompanied
20th-century cello music, now available on the Decca label.
Committed to expanding the cello repertoire, Weilerstein is an
ardent champion of new music. She has worked extensively with
Osvaldo Golijov, who rewrote Azul for cello and orchestra (originally
premiered by Yo-Yo Ma) for her New York premiere performance
at the opening of the 2007 Mostly Mozart Festival. At the 2008
Caramoor festival, Weilerstein gave the world premiere of Lera
Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Violoncello and Piano with the composer
at the keyboard. The two have reprised the work at the SchleswigHolstein Festival, the Kennedy Center, and for San Francisco
Performances since. Alisa Weilerstein is the recipient of theLincoln
Center’s 2008 Martin E. Segal Prize for Exceptional Achievement
and the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award. She received an Avery Fisher
Career Grant in 2000 and was selected for two prestigious young
artists programs in the 2000-01 season: the ECHO (European
Concert Hall Organisation) ‘Rising Stars’ recital series and the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society
Two program.
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YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
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NICOLAS HODGES piano
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Great Performers 2014
Wednesday 27 August 7:30pm
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
_
Debussy said that his twelve studies were
only for pianists with 'remarkable hands'.
Fortunately, Nicolas Hodges possesses them.
These late masterpieces are a distillation of
Debussy's revolutionary techniques, demanding
that pianists transcend their instrument and
themselves to create unimagined sonorities.
GRE AT PERFORMERS
Hodges has stunned audiences with his skill
and his ability to communicate in the most
challenging of new music and his insights into
the core piano repertoire. Common to all his
performances is a desire to cross centuries and
continents to illuminate old and new repertoire
with surprising juxtapositions demonstrating
even more surprising parities.
In this case, it is the late works of Beethoven
and Debussy. The late sonatas of Beethoven are
a radical redefinition of the form: freewheeling,
philosophical and sublime, they are endlessly
fascinating musical mazes. In the second
movement of the Op.111 sonata Beethoven
transcends time itself, with a set of celestial
variations that resound into infinity. Beethoven
regarded his sketch-like Six Bagatelles, Op.126
as the best he had written, and there are
tantalising hints of his most innovative works.
Hiding behind the deadpan facade of Debussy's
Études are worlds of colour and invention as
imaginative as anything he ever wrote, so that
even as pianists are perfecting their octaves,
they are learning how to dream.
_
PROGRAM
_
BEETHOVEN
Six Bagatelles, Op.126
BEETHOVEN
Piano sonata in C minor, No.32, Op.111
DEBUSSY
Études, Books I & II