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Home , Georg Matthias Monn, Trevor Pinnock

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CORINNE MORRIS SCOTTISH CHAMBER cello works by Haydn • Couperin • Monn Y S A

L I S CORINNE MORRIS SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA LEADER: STEPHANIE GONLEY

François Couperin (arr. Bazelaire) Recorded at Pièces en Concert Usher Hall 1. Prélude...... 2:12 Edinburgh, UK 2. Siciliène...... 2:24 26–27 July 2016 and 3. La Tromba...... 1:26 22 January 2017 4. Plainte...... 5:43 5. Air de diable...... 1:43 Produced and recorded by Philip Hobbs Georg Matthias Monn Cello Concerto in G minor Assistant engineering by 6. Allegro...... 6:37 Robert Cammidge 7. Adagio...... 7:08 8. Allegro non tanto...... 4:54 Post-production by Julia Thomas Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb: 1* Design by 9. Moderato...... 10:17 Paul Harpin 10. Adagio...... 9:09 11. Allegro molto...... 6:38 Photography by *cadenzas by Corinne Morris Benjamin Ealovega

Total Running Time: 58 minutes MORRIS C H R

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MORRIS The title of this album, Chrysalis, feels grew; my playing eventually came back apt both for me and for this music. It and was able to articulate some of the new suggests the process whereby things understandings I had been shown. There change, develop, progress their form and was also a new energy, the same kind of yet stay somehow intrinsically the same. underlying energy that propels all the works The Monn Concerto lay dormant for many on this album. I’m the same; I’m different. So years, the manuscript discovered only I feel a particular kinship to these works, and in the early twentieth century. This concerto to that evocative word, ‘chrysalis’. and Haydn’s, too, took another era, the trappings of another context, to find its An artist is nothing without an audience ­— moment and sing to a wider public. similarly, a musician cannot flourish without support and nurturing. I am immensely And I…? Well I changed during my enforced grateful to all who have contributed in time away due to injury. I suffered, but I helping me become who I am today, and to those who stand by me as I re-emerge on the musical scene.

C H R With special thanks to: Adam Greenwood- Byrne, Rita Gregory, Susan and Peter Haisman, Annie Lynn, Anne Furneaux and William Morton, Rod Marten and Howard Shepherdson, Fanny Schulman, Y S A Scott Yarwood. © Corinne Morris, 2017

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MORRIS 5 CORINNE MORRIS PLAYS comfortable and understand the musical HAYDN, COUPERIN AND MONN language and stylistic requirements of each era. When you understand and Haydn’s First Cello Concerto, the C major, perform , even if you don’t recorded here, sits Janus-like in the cellist’s do it on period instruments (which I don’t), repertoire – looking back towards the it still makes you approach later music Baroque but also forward to the ‘modern’ in a different way. So the journey on this cello concerto repertoire. It’s a milestone for recording really starts in the Baroque. The players, as Corinne Morris explained to version of the Couperin that we’ve chosen James Jolly. here has been arranged by a famous French cellist and teacher, Paul Bazelaire (1886– Corinne Morris: Haydn is the arrival point 1958), who – typically for the time – allowed on this musical journey, with Couperin – in himself certain liberties, but I do think that the Baroque style – being the start, and the Couperin pieces are interesting in these Monn occupying the short transitional transcriptions. And I grew up listening to period between both eras. So when we them played by Pierre Fournier, for whom arrive at Haydn we’re well established in they were transcribed, so there’s a personal the Classical period. Of course, there’s no preference to my choosing them. rigid wall between different styles: it doesn’t make sense to me to say that if you play in When you’re using a modern instrument a Baroque style you can’t play Classical or with a modern orchestra, albeit an even Romantic repertoire, or vice versa, or incredibly flexible and adaptable modern that if you play you can’t go orchestra, do you have to take a decision as back into earlier styles. to how far you’re going to go towards some kind of authenticity? So where do you sit in regard to this repertoire and its stylistic demands? Absolutely. And the line is not clear at all. Where do we stop? How do we apply I don’t consider myself a ‘Baroque ornamentation? Talking about sound performer’. A musician, I believe, has to be production, how far can we go with the

6 modern tools that we have (the modern the orchestra and myself. Establishing from bow doesn’t allow us to do certain things the start that we’re not a Baroque band that the Baroque would)? And the strings meant that we couldn’t go any further we play on are going to affect the sound down that path, because that would draw in a huge way. I feel that we don’t live in in questions of pitch, strings and the rest of that era anymore and we’ve moved on. So it. So we went as far as we could with the while it’s interesting to hear sounds as they tools that we were using, knowing that you heard them back then – with their different can only go so far with the modern set-up pitch – I still think there’s a need for us before it becomes a sort of pastiche, or ‘modern players’ to interpret it in the light falls between two playing styles – the of everything that’s happened since, going modern and the Baroque. I hope we struck back in time with today’s tools and all our a good balance. understanding, as well as the knowledge of the evolution that has taken place since. You And no conductor? can’t erase that. That was one of my wishes from the start So, is that why you chose the Scottish – to have this project without a conductor – Chamber Orchestra for this recording? not because I don’t like them (!) but because I feel this music’s essence is fundamentally Yes, I like their versatility, and I was looking and, although the input of a for a chamber orchestra that was open for conductor could have been very rewarding, a project like this, and they certainly were, it would have changed the dynamics of and keen, from the start. It was interesting the group. I was keen for us to work as a to work with Stephanie Gonley, who was chamber-music group does, discussing, leading the orchestra. She’s done a fair elaborating and coming to a stylistic amount of Baroque work, and we got on agreement. Artistically it was important to very well in the sense of gauging a style for me that we do it like that because I wanted this music – we adapted the vibrato, and to keep us all using our ears, so that the coloured ornamentation in a meaningful ensemble playing remained really tight. way, and there was a good rapport between When we performed in concert we formed

7 a semi-circle and I was in the middle, which transforming things in his own writing, and was lovely – and that’s how we recorded developing . Haydn then picked too. It felt good to be surrounded by the up some of that and developed it further orchestra, and having the violins on either himself afterwards. When you put these two side gave it a stereo effect for me. That was concertos side by side you can feel a real especially noticeable in the Monn where sense of one handing on to the other. there’s a lot of dialogue between first and second violins, and I heard it in a way that I’d Do you feel a development in the way the never heard it before. actually used the cello as this programme moves forward in time? It’s always struck me as magical that for years the D major Concerto was ‘the’ If I think of other composers of the time Haydn concerto but when the C major – someone like Boccherini, who was a was discovered in 1961 a major work was cellist – I’m not sure that the use of the added to the cello concerto repertoire instrument changed so dramatically. Haydn overnight. And it was immediately obviously was writing for a fine player and embraced by players. he knew what he could make him do. I think that the first big change for cellists comes Yes, it’s extraordinary how the manuscript later on in the Romantic period. The use just appeared. I know a lot of people of fast passagework, typical of this earlier questioned its authenticity back then – repertoire – both Classical and Baroque – is actually when I was recording it there were quite similar. Perhaps the expressivity of the moments when I too was wondering if it thematic work is more pronounced in the were genuine Haydn, but then it’s got to be! Haydn concerto. It’s more expanded: the It’s so different to the D major work, which ideas are there with Couperin and Monn, dates from some 20 years later. But this but Haydn develops them further in terms C major Concerto is early Haydn, and that’s of the thematic expression. why I wanted it to end this journey. I felt that the Monn concerto would lead the listener Let’s talk about Georg Matthias Monn, who is so well into early Haydn. Monn was already best known for two cello concertos: one that

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L I S made for of the manuscript – which is where you step from a concerto, and the one away from ‘pure’ authenticity, but I believe you’ve recorded here, but which is usually you can still make something credible. They performed in Schoenberg’s realization. are a lovely set of pieces if you respect the style and tempi of that period. When we When I was trying to assemble a were recording them there were mixed programme to record, I was looking for a feelings as to whether we should go full work that would lead up to the early Haydn. out and do it in a nineteenth-century style I toyed with music by Leopold Hoffmann with luscious vibrato and sound, but I was but I really love this Monn and thought it keen to tame the ‘excesses’ and produce would work very nicely. I remember hearing something in keeping with the stylistic the famous Jacqueline Du Pré recording, demands of the original. After we’d finished which is of Schoenberg’s version. recording I think we agreed that was the But then I found an edition that was far right decision. ‘purer’ than the Schoenberg, basically just Monn’s notes, and that’s what I decided You can trace your musical lineage to to go for, partly in a desire to be more Paul Tortelier, so would you consider stylistically correct. yourself a cellist in the French tradition?

And the Couperin pieces? I think the concept of cello schools that used to be very strong – Russian or French There was quite a strong tradition in France or American, where you could identify of taking Baroque music and re-arranging it players easily – is somewhat disappearing as for a twentieth-century audience, albeit in a we become more connected and therefore rather nineteenth-century performing style more open to other influences. So although – both J. C. Bach and Boccherini received I would say that, yes, I am from that school, this treatment. Paul Bazelaire selected I’ve already been ‘influenced’ (in a good some numbers from Couperin’s Les Goûts- way) by other ways of playing. But I think réunis to make a suite and then essentially I have developed my own way, too. I did harmonized them based on the figured bass also work a little bit with Rostropovich and

10 that, coming from my musical upbringing, I could borrow. I made some phone calls was quite a cultural shock. There was an and got in touch with the luthier in France, intensity to his sound, not only in the bow, where I’d sold my cello. I explained what but in the left-hand vibrato, that was always had happened to me and he told me that present. Whether he was playing Bach or he knew the person who had bought my Prokofiev, the intensity was very similar. For instrument. ‘He’s an investor in Paris and me this intensity in the sound works for the he lends out his instruments to prominent Romantic repertoire and later, but not in musicians. I’ll put you in touch – go and see Bach. In a very different way, Tortelier was him.’ I did, and told him my story. He lends the same. The language and outcome was his instruments to players with big careers totally different, but there was a power and and I was essentially starting again from ability to communicate that felt like it was nowhere. He told me that ‘my cello’ had just coming from deep inside his soul. returned from being on loan for the last six years. ‘But after hearing your story and This recording marks your return to playing everything you’ve been through,’ he said, after an eight-year pause brought about by ‘this cello really does belong with you, even a shoulder injury, and it also marks a reunion if not to you’. So I got my cello back! I never with your cello… thought I’d see this instrument again. My best friend had just returned into my life… Having to sell my cello during that long period because I just couldn’t keep up James Jolly is a writer, broadcaster and with the payments was one of the worst the editor-in-chief of Gramophone things – it felt so final. It was bad enough having to cancel all my concerts and being C H R in such pain, but having to part with the cello was truly terrible for me. However, there’s a beautiful story of it coming back Y S A to me. After my therapy and when I was looking to get going again I needed a cello. L I S So I started looking for an instrument that

11 CORINNE MORRIS acclaim up until that point, to be expected from a clearly quite remarkable musician Returning to the platform after a debilitating (one with music in her genes — her pianist- shoulder injury that brought her career ancestor Wilhelm Kloss was teacher to the to a halt for more than five years, British/ Prince of Saxe-Coburg’s children, and had French cellist Corinne Morris self-published played for Queen Victoria). an album, Macedonian Sessions (with the Macedonian Radio Orchestra), Having been a prize-winner of the Maria that was described as ‘a triumphant Canals International Cello Competition in assertion’ by Classical Music magazine. Her Spain, and at the International French Music return to a high level of performing was all Competition in Paris, Corinne was chosen the more remarkable given the nature of by to perform at his the condition but perhaps, given her early festival in Evian (where he affectionately CORINNE

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12 nicknamed her ‘Corinotchka’). When she She was also invited to perform and take took part in one of his masterclasses, she part in the Verbier Academy in Switzerland, recalls, he applauded her playing, embraced as well as the International Cello Festival her and simply said, ‘I have nothing to say!’ in Kronberg in Germany. Corinne has But, she says, she learnt from Rostropovich appeared throughout Europe and beyond, the fascinating idea that one should first including in chamber music performances imagine the sound-world one needs to with Schlomo Mintz at the Jerusalem conjure, and then work out the technique Conservatory. She has made several to do it, rather than the other way around. recordings for France Musique, Bayerischer Another early and regular presence in Rundfunk (Germany) and ORF (). Her her career was Paul Tortelier, introduced BBC debut recital was broadcast on Radio 3, by her teacher Raphael Sommer. At their and she was included in their prestigious list first session, Tortelier, whom Sommer had of preferred broadcast artists. warned her could be very severe, started by extensively praising the then-teenager’s Corinne’s comeback story has inspired technique. ‘But…!’ he continued, and there many in the music industry and beyond. She started a learning relationship that lasted has been featured in publications including until the end of Tortelier’s life. The Times, Gramophone, International Arts Manager, Classical Music and Australia’s At age 16, she obtained an ARCM with Limelight magazine. Corinne was also featured honours (, ) on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. She has recently and continued her training at the prestigious given highly successful London recitals at Conservatoire in Paris where she graduated St Martin in the Fields, Fairfield Halls and with a first prize in both cello and chamber Blackheath Halls. The Nimrod music. She then completed a postgraduate Borenstein is currently writing a concerto for degree in cello performance at the her, which she plans to record in the near University of Music and Performing Arts in future. Corinne plays a cello by C. A. Miremont MORRIS , Austria. dated 1876 on loan to her by a private investor. www.corinnemorris.com

13 SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA has travelled throughout Europe, the Far LEADER: STEPHANIE GONLEY East, India and the USA.

The SCO has made a significant contribution to Scottish life, not just in what it provides culturally, but in what it gives back to the community. Outside the concert hall, SCO players inspire people of all ages in schools, universities, hospitals, care homes, places of work, and other community settings through the work of SCO Connect, the SCO’s creative learning team.

The SCO’s discography exceeds 150 recordings. With its Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati, the orchestra has released five recordings: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (2012), Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été and La Mort de Cléopâtre (2013), Wagner’s Siegfried The internationally celebrated Scottish Idyll (2014), Schumann’s Chamber Orchestra is made up of a unique (2014) and Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 31, 70 collection of talented musicians who inspire and 101 (2015), all on Linn. The orchestra’s and connect with people of all ages. long-standing relationship with its former Conductor Laureate, the late Sir Charles The SCO aims to provide as many Mackerras, resulted in many exceptional opportunities as possible for people to performances and recordings, including hear their music by touring the length and two multi-award-winning albums for Linn of breadth of Scotland and around the world Mozart’s late symphonies. as proud ambassadors for Scottish cultural excellence. In recent years, the orchestra

14 The SCO has strong relationships with many 1st Violin Cello eminent guest conductors, including its Stephanie Gonley Philip Higham Principal Guest Conductor Emmanuel Krivine Ruth Crouch Donald Gillan and Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen, Marciana Buta Eric de Wit Olari Elts, , John Storgårds, and Emily Dellit Imbert Christoff Fourie Oliver Knussen; regular soloist-directors include Amira Bedrush- Robert Anderson Christian Zacharias and Piotr Anderszewski. McDonald Sarah McMahon Sarah Bevan-Baker The orchestra enjoys close relationships Ruth Slater Bass Esther Kim with many leading composers and has Matthias Beltinger Aisling O’Dea Adrian Bornet commissioned more than 100 new works, Lorna McLaren Nikita Naumov including pieces by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sir James MacMillan, Judith Weir, Sally 2nd Violin Oboe Beamish, Karin Rehnqvist, Hafliði Hallgrímsson, Bas Treub Robin Williams Lyell Cresswell, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Laura Comini Rosie Staniforth Einojuhani Rautavaara, John McLeod, Rolf Robert McFall Martinsson, Toshio Hosokawa, and Martin Niamh Lyons Horn Suckling, who is SCO Associate Composer. Stewart Webster Patrick Broderick Catherine James Harry Johnstone The Scottish Chamber Orchestra receives Marcus Barcham core funding from the Scottish Government Stevens Harpsichord as one of Scotland’s five National Performing Gordon Bragg David Gerrard Arts Companies. Viola C H R Kimi Makino Brian Schiele Steve King Y S A Nicola Boag Jessica Beeston L I S Felix Tanner

15 ALSO AVAILABLE ON LINN CKD 562

Richard Tunnicliffe Markku Luolajan- William Conway Claire Martin J.S. Bach: Cello Suites Mikkola Peter Evans Montpellier Cello J.S. Bach: Complete Rachmaninov, Sonatas & Partitas, Lutoslawski and Webern Time & Place BWV 1001–1006

Robin Ticciati Scottish Chamber Trevor Pinnock Fitzwilliam String Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Royal Academy Quartet Orchestra Soloists of Music Soloists Bruckner: Quintet Haydn: Symphonies Mozart: Divertimenti Ensemble & Quartet Nos. 31. 70 & 101 Mozart: Gran Partita For even more great music visit linnrecords.com

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