carte blanche concert iii: Evolutions I: Colin Carr, cello

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) July 28 no. 3 in for Solo Cello, BWV 1009 (ca. 1720) Prélude Sunday, July 28, 10:30 a.m., Stent Family Hall, Menlo School PROGRAM OVERVIEW Cellist Colin Carr, who inaugurated @Menlo’s Carte Bourrée 1 and 2 Blanche Concert series in 2004 with an unforgettable marathon Suite no. 5 in for Solo Cello, BWV 1011 (ca. 1720) performance of the complete Bach , revisits two of Prélude them here—the victorious Third Suite and the austere Fifth— Allemande Courante as part of the 2013 season’s Bachian journey. The Bach Suites, Sarabande bedrock works in the cello’s solo repertoire, set a precedent that 1 and 2 would guide composers for generations, as evidenced by the Gigue Sonata for Solo Cello of the Hungarian composer and ethno- INTERMISSION musicologist Zoltán Kodály, composed in 1915. ZOLTÁN KODÁLY (1882–1967) Sonata for Solo Cello, op. 8 (1915) Allegro maestoso ma appassionato Adagio (con gran espressione) Allegro molto vivace Colin Carr, cello CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS CARTE

Music@Menlo 2013 CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS Program Notes: Cello Evolutions I

On the surface, this recital program, comprising three works for solo cello, All this retuning with little time to settle is almost certain to bring forth a might not appear so extraordinary. It contains two of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites reaction like that of a petulant child. I could possibly avoid this problem and is capped by the Sonata for Solo Cello by Zoltán Kodály. The twist is by performing the concert with three different , all pretuned, but that that each piece requires the cello to be tuned differently: this technique (in might create another problem when I try to board the plane out of here! musical parlance, ), more than simply a means to a different range What does it mean for the cellist to take on a challenge such as this? I of notes, has a dramatic effect on the essential nature of the instrument and feel like an actor, playing three different characters, speaking three different the character of each work. languages, all on the same evening. Or maybe I am a Formula 1 driver! My The program begins with Bach’s Third Cello Suite, in C major, which car and I must be so perfectly attuned to one another, and I must hear and employs the cello’s standard tuning (C G D A). interpret every subtle sound and react instantly. Nobody watching could possibly be aware of such nuances, but the spectacle is still exciting. Yes, I am that driver, the cello is my car, and Menlo, my Grand Prix circuit. And you, my audience, most of you are here to enjoy the drama but a few are keenly aware of the possibility of an imminent crash, given the dangerous The piece is bright and open in character. Its cascades of plunging scales nature of the game! Perhaps in the end I prefer that you hear this concert and lend it an irresistible energy and motion. It is music of joyful without being even slightly aware of the tuning machinations and simply abandon and freedom of spirit. enjoy these three pieces for what they are: great music. With the cello’s standard tuning as its point of departure, the program —Colin Carr proceeds to Bach’s Fifth Suite, in c minor, which requires the lowering of the top string a whole tone from A to G. (Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, Leipzig) The ability to play the notes G and A-flat on the top string allows for Suite no. 3 in C Major for Solo Cello, BWV 1009 chords that would otherwise be impossible. Bach makes potent use of such Suite no. 5 in c minor for Solo Cello, BWV 1011 chords, resulting in a work of startling richness and complexity—perhaps Composed: ca. 1720 deeper and more intense than any of the other five suites. The release of Other works from this period: Sonata no. 3 in C Major for Solo Violin, string tension that comes with tuning the A string downward increases the BWV 1005 (ca. 1720); Partita for Flute in a minor, BWV 1013 (1723); Bran- instrument’s resonance; the addition of a second open G moreover creates denburg Concerti, BWV 1046–1051 (1721); Violin Concerto in E Major, a sonorous natural overtone to the low C string. Even the untrained ear will BWV 1042 (ca. 1723) be transported back to the deep sound of the cello from Bach’s time, when Approximate duration: 26 minutes; 30 minutes the timbral beauty of the instrument was to be found in its roundness and warmth, rather than in the laser-focused penetration that has become the hallmark of twenty-first-century string sound. In 1713, the frugal Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia dismissed his household The Kodály sonata that ends the program is an astonishing juxtaposi- musical establishment in Berlin. The young, cultured Prince Leopold tion of Classical sonata, folk improvisation, and unbridled slash-and-burn of Anhalt-Cöthen took the opportunity to engage some of the finest of virtuosity. In terms of its tuning, rather than lowering the A string, as Bach Friedrich’s musicians and provided them with excellent instruments and does in the c minor Suite, Kodály’s scordatura tuning extends the cello’s established a library for their regular court performances. In December 1717, low register, tuning the bottom two strings down by a semitone, to B and Leopold hired Johann Sebastian Bach, then organist and Kapellmeister F-sharp, respectively. at Weimar, as his Director of Music. Inspired by the high quality of the

musicians in his charge and by the prince’s praise of his creative work, Bach BLANCHE CONCERTS CARTE produced much of his greatest instrumental music during the six years of his tenure at Cöthen, including the Brandenburg Concerti, the , the violin concerti, The Well-Tempered Clavier, many chamber and The lowering of these two strings again releases tension, increasing keyboard compositions, and the works for unaccompanied violin and cello. the overall resonance of the instrument and adding an even greater depth The six Suites for Solo Cello were apparently written for either Christian to the bass that, from the sonata’s opening two b minor chords, is immedi- Ferdinand Abel (whose son Carl Friedrich became the partner of Sebas- ately palpable. The three lower strings hence form a b minor triad (the key tian Bach’s son Johann Christian in an important London concert venture in of the piece), and the three upper strings, a triad. This scordatura the 1760s) or Christian Bernhard Linigke, both master cellists in the Cöthen once again allows for chords that the regularly tuned cello can only dream court orchestra. about. The cello in Bach’s time was still an instrument of relatively recent This is the third time that a Music@Menlo Carte Blanche Concert origin. It was the Cremonese craftsman Andrea Amati who first brought has given me the opportunity to experiment with something new, differ- the violin, , and cello to their modern configurations around 1560 as ent, and dangerous. I appreciate the festival’s sense of adventure that allows the successors to the old softer-voiced family of viols. (The modern double me to be a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread. The cello (especially bass, with its tuning in fourths and its sloping shape—compare its profile with mine) is a hypersensitive instrument that does not like to be tampered with. the square shoulders of the other orchestral strings—is the only survivor of that noble breed of earlier instruments.) For the first century of its existence, . the cello was strictly confined to playing the bass line in concerted works; www.musicatmenlo.org any solo passages in its register were entrusted to the viola da gamba. The ZOLTÁN KODÁLY earliest solo works known to have been written specifically for the instru- (Born December 16, 1882, Kecskemét, Hungary; died March 6, 1967, Buda- ment, from the 1680s, are by Domenico Gabrieli, a cellist in the orchestra pest, Hungary) of San Petronio in Bologna (unrelated to the Venetian Gabrielis); notable Sonata for Solo Cello, op. 8 among them are his Ricercare for Unaccompanied Cello of 1689. The first Composed: 1915 concerto for cello seems to be that composed by Giuseppe Jacchini in 1701. Capriccio for Cello (1915); String Quartet The instrument gained steadily in popularity as it displaced the older gamba, Other works from this period: no. 2, op. 10 (1916); Old Hungarian Soldiers’ Songs for Chamber Orchestra a circumstance evidenced by the many works for it by Antonio Vivaldi and (1917); Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, op. 12 (1919–1920) other early eighteenth-century Italian composers. When Bach proposed to write music for unaccompanied cello sometime around 1720, however, Approximate duration: 31 minutes there were few precedents for such pieces. The examples with which he was most familiar were by a tiny enclave of composers (Westhof, Biber, Wal- The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály entered the University of Buda- ther, Pisendel) centered around Dresden who had dabbled in compositions pest in 1900 to study linguistics and soon thereafter enrolled in the Franz for solo violin, and it was probably upon their models that Bach built his Liszt Academy as a composition student under Hans Koessler. In 1905, he six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin and the half-dozen Suites for Cello. In began what would be his lifelong dedication to the collection and study of comparing these two series of Bach’s works, Philipp Spitta wrote, “The pas- folk music and visited remote villages with the newly invented photograph, sionate and penetrating energy, the inner fire and warmth which often grew creating cylinder recordings of Hungarian folk songs. He crossed paths to be painful in its intensity [in the violin works], is here softened down to a with the young Béla Bartók, who would become a close colleague—the quieter beauty and a generally serene grandeur, as was to be expected from two subsequently came to be regarded as among the twentieth century’s the deeper pitch and fuller tone of the cello.” first significant ethnomusicologists. It was during this period, in 1915, that Bach’s Solo Cello Suites, like his contemporaneous Kodály wrote his Sonata for Solo Cello, op. 8, long before his public debut for (BWV 806–811), follow the traditional form of the Ger- as a composer. It showed the heavy influence of his newly found passion for man instrumental suite—an elaborate prelude followed by a fixed series of Eastern European folk music. dances: allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue. Between the last two Seeking to explore the vast potential of the cello’s range, Kodály calls movements of the cello works are inserted additional pairs of minuets for scordatura, tuning the two lower strings (C and G) down by a half step (Suites nos. 1 and 2), bourrées (nos. 3 and 4), or (nos. 5 and 6). (B and F-sharp)—a sonic nuance to which Bartók partly credited the sona- ta’s original style and “surprising vocal effects.” The sonata begins with two Suite no. 3 in C Major for Solo Cello, BWV 1009 exclamatory chords in the key of b minor. The treble line soon takes over, The Third Suite (C major) opens with a prelude that exploits the rich scales but the theme seems to stumble every few bars of melody, reverting back and arpeggios of the instrument’s middle and low registers. The allemande’s to the opening chords and establishing a grounded tonal base. This pas- elaborate, quick figurations make its tempo seem faster than a metronome sionate rhapsody retreats to the reserved duet of the Adagio movement. would allow. The courante is light and animated. The stately sarabande is The pensive bass and folk-like melody alternately share the spotlight, creat- balanced by the twin bourrées (the second of which slips into c minor) and ing stark contrast with the impending finale, marked Allegro molto vivace. the spirited gigue, whose few measures of implied bagpipe drone create Containing lively scale-based melodies and interrupted by thunderous some of the most novel tonal effects in Bach’s instrumental catalog. chords, much like the opening Allegro maestoso ma appassionato, the final movement develops towards a chordal pizzicato section and concludes Suite no. 5 in c minor for Solo Cello, BWV 1011 with an energetic buildup to one final breathtaking B, returning the listener The Suite no. 5 (c minor), often characterized as the most profound and to the work’s very beginning. austere of the set, begins with a prelude reminiscent of a : —Andrew Goldstein a slow, deeply melancholic opening section with dotted rhythms is followed by quickly moving music whose subtle shifts of register imply the intertwin- ing of fugal voices. The ensuing movements use the forms and styles of the traditional dances, though their expressive state is not one of diversion but

CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS CARTE of sadness in the slow movements (allemande, sarabande) and firm deter- mination in the fast ones (courante, gavottes, gigue). —Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Music@Menlo 2013