The Concerts

I have now performed the six suites entirely five times in the past month. And I am still as excited and humbled as I was when I started this. Perhaps even more so!


(Convocation Hall at the University of Alberta)

Playing six suites is a mesmerizing experience for both the performer as well as for the audience. When I set out to perform the 6 suites in one concert, I assumed it would be too much for most audiences to do in "one sitting", and the audience who would come to the concerts would probably be a select few.


(warming up before a concert)

I created the idea of performing the suites four times in Edmonton, in 4 different venues, but the audience needed to buy a ticket only once and come and go to each concert as they pleased; perhaps to listen to two suites at the time and come for more a next concert.
I was wrong: audiences came in very large numbers at every concert and most stayed through the entire performances! About 25 people came to all four complete performances, even!


(Robertson Wesley United Church)

Of course performing on four different instruments is very interesting, and people really seemed to enjoy that variety. Don't underestimate the power of the Bach suites though; How could one get up and leave in the middle?!


(All Saints' Anglican Cathedral)

The feedback on the different instruments has been very interesting.
Of course the carbon fibre cello stirs the most debate. No one appears to be neutral on that cello: they either really like it or really dislike it.


(sharing thoughts after the concert)

I was talking to two people after one concert and one person pointed to the carbon and said: "...you could have left that cello at home". The other person apeared not to have heard that comment and said: "why don't you play them all on that carbon cello; it is so far superiour!"
Those two comments seem to sum up the opinions of all audiences. It is almost funny!


(introducing the carbon fibre cello)

As I introduced the instruments before the suites, I talked mainly about the carbon fibre's perks of being unaffected by humidity, temperature, abuse of airport baggage handlers.
Then, when I started the first bar of the C Major suite, I could predict to hear the stir in the audience."WOW" seemed to be whispered everywhere. Yes: it is loud and clear, that cello!
One audience member found that it sounded "like an over-edited CD; too perfect, no soul". Another found that it was "so easy to listen too; so clear, so soothing".


(the television was interested in my concerts)

The opinions on the Mirecourt (with which I just celebrated my 20th anniversary!) and the baroque cello were not as black or white as on the carbon.



My Mirecourt is initially exactly what people assume a cello sounds like. It looks like a cello, it sounds like a cello. That means that people enjoyed it, but no one gave it much thought either, until the fourth suite.



By that time they had heard the Mirecourt once at the very beginning in the 1st suite; at which time it sounded the way a cello is supposed to sound and they had nothing to compare it with. By now they had heard the baroque cello and the carbon as well and as they listened to this cello again, they compared it with the other two.


(Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives)

Now they heard the depth that this cello has, especially after the carbon and even in this most difficult suite, which is in an uncomfortable key on the cello (Eb Major), and the instrument does not ring at its best.
It was at this point in the program that most people started to form strong opinions on the cellos!



With the baroque cello a few people initially had trouble with the fact that it did not project like a modern cello. Or they had difficulty with the vibration of the gut strings, the different types of overtones or the occasional buzz in the string.

They had one more chance to hear the baroque cello, in the 5th suite, with scordatura.



Because of the scordatura (the a-string is tuned down to g), this suite lends itself extremely well for the low baroque tuning. That also meant that people changed their minds on their initial opinion. Had they not felt particularly strong one way or another when I played the 2nd suite on it; "it looks like a cello, sounds like a cello, just a little softer and with a lower tuning and a funny way the cellist plays it without an endpin!"


(the ARTery)

Now that they heard the 5th suite, most people really enjoyed the richness of the overtones (a result of the much lower tension, the gut strings and the instrument itself). Many people commented on the deep sound of the bass notes.



The piccolo was an instrument that everyone loved, without exception. Even some people who are generally sceptical and thought that they preferred the modern cello for the 6th suite, were sold on it.



It truly is an amazing little instrument and I hope to do much more with it. People were surprised at the "silver" sound and clarity of the high strings. It still has plenty of depth as well.



Surprising to me was that it appeared to reach further than the baroque cello, even though it is only 3/4 of the size! Almost everyone commented on the richness of the sound both in the upper as the lower registers.





How does one feel after performing 6 suites? Dizzy, wired, excited, inspired, happy, confused.
I will perform them once more next weekend and then I will record them. I have 12 recording days booked this summer and I am very excited about it!!


(...and how does one fit 4 cellos in a smaller car?)

Bach

I am on the homestretch, getting ready for the concerts in Alberta.

The Concerts

• Sunday, April 12, 2009, 1 PM. Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives, Jasper.
  
• Sunday, April 19, 2009, 2 PM. Robertson Wesley United Church, Edmonton.
  
• Saturday, May 2, 2009, 2 PM. All Saints' Anglican Cathedral, Edmonton.
  
• Sunday, May 3, 2009, 2 PM. The ARTery, Edmonton.
• May 23, 2009, 1 PM. University of Lethbridge. Part of the University of Lethbridge Cello Festival.
• May 24, 2009,1 PM. University of Lethbridge. Part of the University of Lethbridge Cello Festival
  

The Venues

Each venue that I chose for the performances is very different.

• In Jasper it will be at a museum, at a contemporary art exhibit in a mountain town in the Rockies. The acoustics there are great and audiences can look around at the art while they listen.
• Two of the concerts in Edmonton will be at great churches.
  Churches have been popular concert venues throughout the centuries. Their acoustics are generally very good for instrumental music. It might be hard on the audience's bums though...
• One concert will be at 10 AM and is a so called Coffee Concert at Convocation Hall at the University of Alberta. This is a true concert venue with good acoustics, though not as "forgiving" as some others. For once the audience will have comfortable seats!
• This performance time may seem unusual in North America; at least here in Edmonton it is uncommon, but many concerts in Europe are on Sunday morning at “coffee time”. Usually this means about 11 AM, but since the 6 suites are a bit of a marathon, I decided to start early so that people can go for lunch after..
  At the end of the 17^th century Coffea Arabica reached Western Europe. For a long time it was regarded a kind of medicine. Contrary to tea, which was served in fancy salons, coffee was served in more ordinary “coffee houses”. Coffee soon became wildly popular and became synonymous with having a good time together. Many of those meetings at the local coffee houses involved concerts, some more spontaneous than others; Bach even wrote a “coffee cantata”! At this concert coffee will be served to honour an old tradition.
• The last concert in Edmonton is at a very alternative venue. It is in the rough part of downtown Edmonton, in an old, decrepit but very alive building, where a lot of "cool" arts events are happening; from poetry readings, to contemporary dance to provocative visual art. At this concert the audience will be much closer to the performer so it will feel much more intimate.This follows another tradition of performing music in a chamber setting. The audience is close to the performer, sitting relaxed around tables, enjoying a drink and nibbling food while listening to music.
• The concerts in Lethbridge are part of a cello festival, where participants and audience are immersed in "everything cello" for a few days. The buzz will be quite different there!
  

The Music

If anyone is under the impression that it has to get easier by now; it doesn't!

Bach keeps surprising me, challenging me and keeps me on my toes!
Hooray!

Part of this is something every musician is familiar with: the better we get; the more critical we get as well! Which means we loose track of the progression we make, and we tend to just notice what else still needs to be done. And believe me; there is always more to do! The good thing about that is that this keeps us practicing very hard until the last moment.

And that is just what I am doing. Did you think I was done with the metronome? I thought so too, but I resurrected it this week. And just when I figured I played the 10 million or so double stops in the suites exactly the way I wanted to, I changed my mind and since a few days I execute them all very differently!

Of course I have listened to so many recordings of the suites that I have lost track of the numbers. And I still listen, after a hiatus of about 3 months, during which I felt I did not want to be influenced.

I started listening again, and feel more intimidated by the suites than ever before. Don't get me wrong; I know every note of these suites intimately. I have studied so many versions of manuscript that I think I am able to distinguish whose version people are performing from, or even which version of manuscript the editor of the performance edition used. And still I feel humbled and at awe by them.

I still discover little and not so little things in listening and studying the manuscripts. I just changed a note in the first Menuet of the second suite. I must have played that suite since I was 16 years old or so, and yet it is only yesterday that I changed the a-e double stop just after the repeat to a-c#! It was such a revelation! And yet I have heard Bylsma and Rostropovich play that note "forever". Almost everyone else plays a-e though. Anna Magdalena writes a-c#, other sources write a-e. Who knows; I might change my mind again. And again. These kinds of revelations are huge for me, but may seem nothing for someone else. And certainly for my audience, who will listen to it; they won't care and most of them won't even notice!

A movement that every cellist perpetually struggles with is the first Menuet of the second suite. I mentioned the double stops before. The lengths in which they are spelled vary a lot. Bylsma writes about this in his "Fencing Master":

"Only a few movements have a bass as complete as the first Menuet of the second suite. The bass is logical in itself, and when playing it alone, what one suspected all along immediately becomes apparent; the notation is in a strange way "conventional". Without good musical reason the basses and other accompanying notes are given the same length as the melody notes to which they belong."

He continues:

"There are more conventions like that. For instance in the score of the St. Mathew passion, the basses of the secco recitatives are notated short and in the St. John passion the same notes are written long but they must be played exactly the same way (short). Why? I don't know. Tradition?

....

There are two things to be learned from this: the notated length of the bass really has no meaning, and when another voice is a long note, another note may very well be bowed back and forth(!)." Judge every bass note on its own merits. Arpeggiate in such a way that the logic of the bass does not suffer. Therefore, break 2 string chords as well, when in the midst of 3 and 4 part chords."

I have read Bylsma's book numerous times, and listened to so many recordings, including his, of course, but suddenly... click... something made sense:

Don't try so desperately to hold on to more than one note in a chord!

Duh!!

And it has made a huge difference already.

Yes: that Menuet of the 2nd suite isn't so bad after all!

Suddenly the Sarabande of the 6th suite is a lot easier too.

The Sarabande of the 4th suite has had a few challenges for me, because the fingerboard of the cello that I play this suite on (my Mirecourt), has a dent (playing too much) exactly at the bflat on the G string. (yes; I know; I need to get the fingerboard shaved). The chord in bar 3; b-flat and f, should be exactly across from each other, but they aren't on this cello, so it has been a terrible issue. The b-flat is shown as a dotted half note, but the quarter notes in the melody are all separate. I have always tried to get around that by at least holding b-flat and f together as long as possible, and even experimented with slurring the entire bar (I did not like that).

But if you just break the chord, and play the b-flat arpeggiated before the f...

Now I am laughing!

Then there are tempi. If you listen to 50 different performances of the suites, you will hear 50 different tempi. Even if you listen to a live performance of a suite by a cellist who's recording you have played a million times; the tempo choice is often different. I sure change my mind a lot! It keeps the suites alive and it does say a lot about Bach's genius. Casals called them "Masterpieces in constant state of evolution". Listen to any recording of any other piece and the tempo may vary by a notch or two, but never as drastically as with the suites. That is great and a little unsettling too. What will I do on stage? I make a strong commitment to a tempo one day and completely disagree with it the next!
Every cellist feels challenged by the suites. Pieter Wispelweij plans to record them every 7 years to keep putting out his new ideas. Rostropovitch was very reluctant to record them because he did not want to put a "definitive" interpretation out.

I play a Gavotte I fast and Gavotte II slow one day and I want to reverse it the next day, or suddenly feel they should both be rather slow...or both fast!

To feel the Prelude of the 4th suite in 2 makes it a lot easier to listen to.

And easier to play, to give it shape.

Or the Courante of the 3rd suite in 1.

I think... For now...

I think I will be humbled and challenged by this music forever!

Genius!

The Instruments

The constant change of instruments is challenging and great fun. I do feel like I finally have a grip on it.
When I say challenging, I am not just talking about the distance between the fingers or between the strings with the bow though. Sure; that will always be a challenge. The Mirecourt has a length from the bridge to the nut of 70.2 centimetres. The the carbon fibre cello is about the same, the baroque cello 69 and the piccolo 64 cm.

The bridges are cut so differently. I have to be careful on the piccolo that I don't bow on the G string when I mean to just play the d. But muscle memory (which truly is in your brain) is amazing and I seem to have found my way with that.

Initially I tried very hard to get the same volume out of the baroque cello that I got out of the carbon. That really sounded bad! Now I am very content with a softer sound. It still takes my ears a few minutes to get used to it every time I switch, but I really like it.

Even more challenging is to be able to get the intended expression out of each instrument. And to adapt my expectation to each cello. I do need more dynamic differences on the modern cellos than on the old ones, just because they can and it sounds silly not too (and it sounds really great when I do).
I can not go to those same extremes on the baroque cellos, even though you can make lots of dynamic differences still, of course. More importantly; the warmth of the gut strings on those allow me to play with the colour and make me search for overtones that I can not find on the steel strings.

A few weeks ago I played a short concert where I played the entire fourth suite, on 3 cellos. The Prelude and Allemande on the baroque cello, the Courante and Sarabande on the Mirecourt and the Bourree I and II and the Gigue on the carbon fibre. I spent little time preparing that, just because I figured I was in good shape, I practice the 4th suite on my Mirecourt all the time and I know the other instruments well. To my surprise I had a lot more difficulty on stage than I had anticipated.

The Prelude of that suite is of course a challenge at the best of times, but was hard on the baroque cello. It took me a while to realize that I needed much, much more bow than I was used to playing this on my Mirecourt. And when it came to the Bourrees and Gigue, I took a tempo that was much faster than I should have for my own comfort, just because I wanted to "show off" how easy the carbon fibre cello was.
Weird as it may sound: I have come a long way since then (and that was only 3 weeks ago). I guess that concert made a few things very clear to me and I have practiced differently since. Perhaps I became more aware? A concert is always different than time by yourself in the practice room.

The promotion; creating a "buzz"

The challenge for every musician is always to try to get people to your concert.
My husband is a painter and his work is done months prior to an exhibit opening. That means that he has a lot of time that he can devote to promoting the exhibit. He can write press releases, mail outs, call people, visit people and do whatever else is necessary to let people know that you have an event coming up. It also helps that he is quite shameless approaching people.
Musicians are in the practice room until the hour before the concert! That leaves us very little time to interact with our potential audience. Thank goodness for me, my husband is also a graphic designer, so he makes my website, updates it whenever I want him to, and he makes posters and hand outs for my concerts. Yes; I still have to write text, but at least someone else is taking care of the distribution of flyers and posters, etc.

I started early this time around, so that I do have time in the practice studio closer to the performances, but also to make sure that people know about it well in advance. People are busy; they need to be able to plan ahead. With these concerts, the "buzz" seems to be happening; the word spreads quickly. I am excited!
It is an expensive profession though: I have had to rent the concert venues, print posters and hand-outs. O yeah; and I bought two cellos and a bow...
There better be a lot of people to break even!
But it is so much fun!

The tickets:

I decided to make my Edmonton concerts work in such a way that the audience can buy a ticket once and then come to as many of the concerts as they would like. For many people 6 suites in one sitting is a little much (especially if they are sitting in a church pew).
I will play 2 suites, have an intermission, 2 more suites, another intermission, and then the last 2 suites. Every "set" starts on the hour. People can decide to leave after every set and come back for the next set or two on another date. Or they can come to all 6 suites 4 times, of course!
The options:

• Listen to all six suites in one afternoon
• Leave after two suites and come back for more at the next performances
• Listen to all six suites several times!

• 1st hour: Suite 1 and Suite 2 (Mirecourt cello, Baroque cello)
• 2nd hour: Suite 3 and Suite 4 (Carbon fibre cello, Mirecourt cello)
• 3rd hour: Suite 5 and Suite 6 (Baroque cello, Cello piccolo)

To perform from memory, or not?

With the performances just around the corner, I can not tell you how many people have asked if would be performing the six suites from memory.

Let me begin by saying that I strongly believe that in order to perform a piece well, one should know it from memory in all of its details.
However... should one always perform it without the music at least nearby?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
...

I have decided that I will NOT perform the suites from memory!

While the ability to perform all suites from memory is hugely admirable, I don't think I could enjoy the performance the same way if I were to perform all six suites from memory. I would be too afraid I might loose sight of the "big picture", would feel restricted, too worried if I might possibly end up at the wrong end of a passage and having to improvise my way out of it.
Instead I think I would prefer having the music comfortably with me, giving me the freedom to re-invent my interpretation every time again.

I think that this way I would enjoy the performance.

How would the audience feel if I played from music? Would they care? Would the enjoy it more? Would they find it distracting? Would they find it embarrassing?

Some cultures emphasize the importance of performing from memory. The North American culture (if such a thing exists) is one of them, and so seem the Eastern European and Russian schools to be. For some of them there simply is "no other way".

When I am in an audience, I do not care if the performer does or does not have the music. What I care about is whether it is clear that the musician knows the music well and that the performance moves me.

I have, on occasion, felt very uncomfortable when musicians (some very famous ones!) lost their place and either had to start over or improvise to get out of their predicament. In those cases I never fully relaxed again in the audience, because; "what if he or she gets lost again?!"
Some musicians get consoled by the idea that even very seasoned performers get lost. "if it can happen to them, it does not matter so much that I struggle with these issues as well!"
I feel differently: "they" can get away with it; "they" will be forgiven very easily, given their status. However when I loose it in performance, I have to prove myself all over again.

On the other hand; I have listened to ill prepared performances where the performer was clearly just reading the notes. This too, is very uncomfortable, if not irritating, no matter how talented or famous the performer.

Hence my first sentence: in order to perform a piece well, one should know it from memory in all of its details.
For me, however, to be able to be creative, free, expressive and to enjoy it myself, I like to have the comfort of music in the vicinity.

Last fall I went to the second Amsterdam cello biennial. Every morning started with a different Bach suite, performed by a different cellist. These were all played from memory. At many other concerts including some cello concertos performed by very seasoned cellists, as well as most concerts involving cello and piano, the musicians had music in front of them.
I asked my former prof what he thought of the whole issue of memorizing. I remember that during my university years it was never insisted upon that we'd perform from memory, though we did need to be able to play the pieces from memory in our lessons.
He said: "you'd be an idiot to play that concert from memory" (referring to performing six Bach suites in one afternoon). Then he quoted famous Viola da Gamba virtuoso Jordi Savall to emphasize his point.
At a masterclass for Savall, one particular student was playing one of the gamba sonatas by Bach from memory. Savall apparently did not like that. Apparently he said "when you are playing from memory, you are placing yourself between the composer and the music. What you will hear is the performer, not the composer, and who are you to think you are better than Bach!"

You have to remember that I did not hear him say it first hand, so it may have been quoted incorrectly, but I do agree that for me, playing with the music, especially with the manuscript, allows me to interpret the composers wishes more truthfully.

Now that we are on the topic of manuscript: when you read manuscript, it gives you a great insight in the composers' head. Just by the way notes are grouped, slurs are placed, where notes are placed in relation to others, we tend to change the way we perform them.
Unfortunately we do not have an original copy by Bach of the suites. Thank goodness we have several good copies, including the one from his wife Anna Magdalena and some, that appear to have come from the same source, are remarkably similar. It gives us as close a glimpse into what he wrote as we can have.
Will I perform from one of those? Probably not, but they are always there when I practice. It is amazing how much the interpretation changes depending on which copy I play from!

This art of music writing will soon be lost forever. Many music students don't even learn to write music by hand anymore!
With composers largely writing on computers now we are on one hand relieved that we never again have to read badly copied scores but we are on the other hand sad, because we can no longer see the personality of the composer...