CATERINA DI CATERINA PERRI/ECM RECORDS

28 October 2018 / Strings lving R vo e E la n Kim Kashkashian’s t recording of Bach’s i

Cello Suites reflects o

A a lifetime of careful

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By Brian Wise s

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StringsMagazine.com 29 or Kim Kashkashian, record- composer’s three sonatas for da gamba She adds: “People have asked me about this ing J.S. Bach’s six Cello and harpsichord (also works that are fre- for years: How come you don’t have the Bach Suites began with a host of quently linked to the modern cello). And in suites out? I guess I just wasn’t quite ready.” probing questions—about recent years, she has often commingled Bach articulations, published edi- and Kurtág in concert. he recording, scheduled for tions, and choice of instru- “You play Bach all your life long and you October release on ECM, ments. Yet there was one learn every day from it,” says Kashkashian, may have arrived sooner had matter she considered settled from the start: who turned 66 in August. “The music is a injury not temporarily Fperforming the suites on a modern viola. mirror of your failings and it’s a mirror of derailed her plans. Kash- “Whether you play them on the cello or on your strengths. It teaches you about every- kashian was leading a studio the viola, it’s just a question of what octave thing. I’m not practicing or playing these class at the New England you’re in,” says Kashkashian. “It’s not even a pieces less now than I did before I recorded Conservatory, where she is on faculty, when key change. And knowing that Bach often them. It’s still a process, which I would never aT misstep caused her to trip over the side of a transcribed his own music for other instru- want to live without.” desk and crack two ribs. The accident sidelined ments—in ways that were much wilder and far-reaching in scope—then going from cello to viola is just nothing.” Kashkashian brings to Bach a resumé that is decid- edly hard to pigeonhole. Critics frequently identify an eloquent, sober, speech- like quality to the - born violist’s playing, honed through a longstanding advocacy of former Soviet- block composers, including , György Kur- tág, and . At the same time, Kash- kashian’s arrangements of Spanish and Argentine songs in recent years have highlighted a lighter, more ebullient character in her playing, a quality that would inform Bach’s dance move- ments. And even her pensive recordings of Tigran Mansu- rian’s music—representing her family’s Armenian heri- tage—might find echoes in the intimate sarabande of Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite. Kashkashian considers Bach her “greatest life com- panion” and the composer has lived in her recital litera- ture since at least 1981, when she performed the First Cello Suite at New York’s Metro- politan Museum of Art. In 1994, she and label-mate

Keith Jarrett recorded the ROBERTOTESTI/ECM RECORDS

30 October 2018 / Strings her for about six weeks, and upon return to the and Johann Peter Kellner) and modern edi- instrument, she was forced to wear a compres- tions by James Collorafi and Reinhard Goebel sion belt. “You never know which muscles you (the latter unpublished). She also took inspi- When you are using just to breathe deeply—and how ration from Bach, The Fencing Master, cellist much diaphragm support plays a role in sound Anner Bylsma’s 2001 analysis of the suites. transcribe Bach, production—until you can’t expand!” she The process of developing the edition forced you can’t break it. wrote in an email. Kashkashian to scrutinize every tempo, When in late 2016 and early 2017 Kash- phrasing, and articulation. Ultimately, her It is so perfect on kashian entered the recording studio (New edition lays out two sets of articulations, one the cellular level, York’s American Academy of Arts and Let- “straight” and the other embellished, the lat- ters), she used two instruments built for her in ter of which she uses in the repeat sections. and on the big the 1980s: a viola by German luthier Stefan- To this listener, Kashkashian largely sticks architecture level, Peter Greiner, and a five-string viola from the to received practices when it comes to the Italian workshop of Francesco Bissolotti. The more than 100 trills in the suites (a topic on that you simply latter is used in the Suite No. 6, which calls which whole books have been written). But as for a fifth upper string tuned to an E. Some the writer Paul Griffiths observes in the can’t harm it. scholars believe that Bach wrote it for a viola recording’s liner notes, Kashkashian has —Kim Kashkashian pomposa, violoncello piccolo, or another other devices in her arsenal. Ornaments at undetermined instrument. (Terminology var- times will subtly mimic the broader contours ied in the 18th century and the manuscript of the music; a triplet, for instance, might produced by the composer’s second wife, Anna inspire an ornament in a triplet form. “If he “He always tries to be with the musician Magdalena, merely specifies “five strings.”) is picking up on that, I would have to thank and he always offers the most helpful and Indeed, there’s further evidence that the my subconscious,” says Kashkashian. thoughtful comments,” Kashkashian says of entire sequence was composed for a violon- She says that she has performed on Eicher. “It’s totally relaxing and good to put cello piccolo or perhaps a cello da spalla Baroque instruments and bows in the past, you back where you belong in the music.” (imagine a large viola but strapped over but ultimately, didn’t feel a connection. “I Not one for marketing gambits, Kash- the shoulder like a guitar). This would bolster could have used gut strings or a Baroque bow kashian doesn’t plan a promotional tour for any violist’s claim to the suites, but Kash- but I leave that approach to those who do it her new album, stating that her life as a per- kashian sidesteps the question. “When you best,” she says. “I use the voice and the former is separate from her life as a recording transcribe Bach, you can’t break it,” Kash- instruments that I’m accustomed to using artist. This point is echoed by composer Lera kashian asserts. “It is so perfect on the cel- and that I hope I’m most effective with. For Auerbach. “Kim Kashkashian is a consum- lular level, and on the big architecture level, me to have grabbed onto something that I mate recording artist,” she writes in an that you simply can’t harm it.” don’t spend a lot of time doing and try to pro- email. “In our time, the recorded version of a For Kashkashian, “the biggest challenge in duce my best expression of these pieces work is a determining factor and the princi- playing any of the solo Bach string music is: would not have made sense.” pal tool, beyond the score, for other artists to How do you interpret the three- and four- become familiar with a new work.” note chords? I think the common practice of CM founder Manfred Eicher After such concentrated arranging, dividing the chords ‘two and two’ is probably first proposed recording the rehearsing, and recording Bach, Kashkashian not the closest to what might have been done Cello Suites after hearing says that her relationship to Bach’s Cello back in the day.” Rather than weighting every Kashkashian perform Bach Suites is continually shifting, and no one multiple-stop evenly between the beginning at a church in Austria. The suite stands out above the rest in her per- and end of the chord, she aims to arpeggiate veteran producer had sonal repertoire. at a speed derived from the music’s “charac- signed the violist some 30 “We go through phases with all of them,” ter and emotional content.” This can result in years earlier, after noticing her performance she says. “I go through phases maybe a couple a “very, very close arpeggiated chord.” Eof a Hindemith viola sonata on a German of months at a time when the C-minor suite “That, for me, is the real question that radio broadcast. Her first album for ECM was speaks to me. Then I’m going through a recurs, especially in the dance movements a recital of elegy-themed works, and has been phase, probably because it’s mirrored in the for the suites,” she continues. “What does it followed by more than two-dozen recordings emotional content of my life, when the E-flat mean to play a double-stop and what does since. suite would be saying the most to me. It gives it mean when you add a third note and a Eicher took an active role in the new record- unbelievable comfort and peace and joy. fourth note?” ing, from placing microphones to determining “Then maybe there will be a time in my life, With no surviving manuscript in Bach’s the final order of the suites. Instead of a strict some months later, when the G-major suite own hand, Kashkashian developed her own chronological sequence, he developed an arc will do the same thing. It’s a cyclical process. edition, building on several 18th-century starting with the Suite No. 2 in D minor and I don’t know if it’s that way for many of us, sources (including those by Anna Magdalena ending with the Suite No. 6 in D major. but at best it is.” n

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