CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS
Program Notes: Cello Evolutions I
The piece is bright and open in character. Its cascades of plunging scales and arpeggios lend it an irresistible energy and motion. It is music of joyful abandon and freedom of spirit. With the cello’s standard tuning as its point of departure, the program proceeds to Bach’s Fifth Suite, in c minor, which requires the lowering of the top string a whole tone from A to G.
All this retuning with little time to settle is almost certain to bring forth a reaction like that of a petulant child. I could possibly avoid this problem by performing the concert with three different cellos, all pretuned, but that might create another problem when I try to board the plane out of here! What does it mean for the cellist to take on a challenge such as this? I feel like an actor, playing three different characters, speaking three different languages, all on the same evening. Or maybe I am a Formula 1 driver! My car and I must be so perfectly attuned to one another, and I must hear and 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 nature of the game! Perhaps in the end I prefer that you hear this concert without being even slightly aware of the tuning machinations and simply enjoy these three pieces for what they are: great music. —Colin Carr
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(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 chords that would otherwise be impossible. Bach makes potent use of such chords, resulting in a work of startling richness and complexity—perhaps deeper and more intense than any of the other five suites. The release of string tension that comes with tuning the A string downward increases the instrument’s resonance; the addition of a second open G moreover creates a sonorous natural overtone to the low C string. Even the untrained ear will be transported back to the deep sound of the cello from Bach’s time, when 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. The Kodály sonata that ends the program is an astonishing juxtaposition of Classical sonata, folk improvisation, and unbridled slash-and-burn virtuosity. In terms of its tuning, rather than lowering the A string, as Bach does in the c minor Suite, Kodály’s scordatura tuning extends the cello’s low register, tuning the bottom two strings down by a semitone, to B and F-sharp, respectively.
The lowering of these two strings again releases tension, increasing the overall resonance of the instrument and adding an even greater depth to the bass that, from the sonata’s opening two b minor chords, is immediately palpable. The three lower strings hence form a b minor triad (the key of the piece), and the three upper strings, a D major triad. This scordatura once again allows for chords that the regularly tuned cello can only dream about. This is the third time that a Music@Menlo Carte Blanche Concert has given me the opportunity to experiment with something new, different, and dangerous. I appreciate the festival’s sense of adventure that allows me to be a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread. The cello (especially mine) is a hypersensitive instrument that does not like to be tampered with. *Bolded terms are defined in the glossary, which begins on page 101.
Suite no. 3 in C Major for Solo Cello, BWV 1009 Suite no. 5 in c minor for Solo Cello, BWV 1011 Composed: ca. 1720 Other works from this period: Sonata no. 3 in C Major for Solo Violin, BWV 1005 (ca. 1720); Partita for Flute in a minor, BWV 1013 (1723); Brandenburg Concerti, BWV 1046–1051 (1721); Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1042 (ca. 1723) Approximate duration: 26 minutes; 30 minutes In 1713, the frugal Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia dismissed his household musical establishment in Berlin. The young, cultured Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen took the opportunity to engage some of the finest of Friedrich’s musicians and provided them with excellent instruments and established a library for their regular court performances. In December 1717, Leopold hired Johann Sebastian Bach, then organist and Kapellmeister 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 produced much of his greatest instrumental music during the six years of his tenure at Cöthen, including the Brandenburg Concerti, the orchestral suites, the violin concerti, The Well-Tempered Clavier, many chamber and keyboard compositions, and the works for unaccompanied violin and cello. The six Suites for Solo Cello were apparently written for either Christian Ferdinand Abel (whose son Carl Friedrich became the partner of Sebastian Bach’s son Johann Christian in an important London concert venture in the 1760s) or Christian Bernhard Linigke, both master cellists in the Cöthen court orchestra. The cello in Bach’s time was still an instrument of relatively recent origin. It was the Cremonese craftsman Andrea Amati who first brought the violin, viola, and cello to their modern configurations around 1560 as the successors to the old softer-voiced family of viols. (The modern double bass, with its tuning in fourths and its sloping shape—compare its profile 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;
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CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS
On the surface, this recital program, comprising three works for solo cello, might not appear so extraordinary. It contains two of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites and is capped by the Sonata for Solo Cello by Zoltán Kodály. The twist is that each piece requires the cello to be tuned differently: this technique (in musical parlance, scordatura), more than simply a means to a different range of notes, has a dramatic effect on the essential nature of the instrument and the character of each work. The program begins with Bach’s Third Cello Suite, in C major, which employs the cello’s standard tuning (C G D A).
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