HIGH NOTES

Cabezas shows strength

in his sound on cello

BY HARRY SCHROEDER

    The Impromptu Concert series concluded its regular season at St. Paul’s Church with their Rising Star concert. Playing was Gabriel Cabezas on cello, accompanied by Tao Lin on piano. The program—selections composed by Janacek, Debussy, Britten, Shostakovich, and Osvaldo Golijov– consisted entirely of music written in the 20th century, with its special demands on the musicianship of the players, demands which they met entirely successfully.

    Cabezas, now in his early 20s, has achieved an extraordinary mastery of his difficult instrument. He could move into romanticism when the music called for it, but, unlike many string players, he wasn’t tempted to that elsewhere. He can actually alter his sound at will: He began the Debussy with an enormous sound, and then cut way back for more delicate passages. He is expert at pizzicato playing, and at double stops. He has great control dynamically, in several places demonstrating an easy progress from soft delicate playing to intensity at fortissimo.

    The great strength of his playing is in his sound. There is a wide range of acceptable sounds from cellists: Right at the beginning of the concert one knew that this was one of the good ones. It is broad, and rich, and entirely uncompromised, even in fast passages. And it can express anything Cabezas wants it to.

    This was the second Impromptu appearance by the piano accompanist, Tao Lin: He served in that capacity last year with the cellist Jonah Kim. In that concert he had a small problem with the acoustics in the church; this year he solved it. His accompanying was excellent, precisely connected rhythmically to the cellist’s lines. In the Debussy there was some nice interplay between the two of them; in the Janacek there was a passage of simple phrases from the cello against an elaborate piano background, and Lin’s note placement was admirably accurate.

    The first piece after the intermission was Britten’s Third Suite for Solo Cello, with its angular reference to the prelude of Bach’s first cello suite, the one with all the chord arpeggios. In one movement Cabezas demonstrated the full expressive range of the instrument, from delicate playing on a pleasant melody to some nearly savage attacks.

I confess I didn’t find a good listener’s place in that piece, which is a fault of my ear (nothing is more objectionable in writings about music than a reviewer saying he disliked a piece because he didn’t understand it), but certainly it was all excellent cello playing.

    For me, the Shostakovich Sonata was the high point of the program. Shostakovich is not usually cited as an exceptional melodist, but the flowing lines in the slower parts of the piece were striking.  In particular, some of the writing in the third, largo, movement was gorgeous, and strongly and beautifully played. It was here that Tao Lin’s playing showed at its best: in the second movement there was a little ditty which he and the cellist traded delightfully back and forth; in the last movement the virtuosity of both players was tested, and they both passed with honors.

    It’s nice to hear so adventurous a program. Next year, along with a string quartet and a pianist, plans include a saxophone soloist and two groups which extend their range well beyond the traditional repertoire. Although some of the recent Sunday’s program may have grated on the ears of esthetic conservatives, the Impromptu board are to be congratulated for including modern, often difficult, music along with the conventional choices, in recognition of the fact that music is always in the process of change. A number of explanations for this have been advanced by musicologists and social historians: in the nineteenth century the move from the court to the concert hall in the interests of new middle class audiences; in the 20th, the abandonment of old musical rules and habits as part of the breakdown of the older culture, along with a progressively greater tolerance for dissonance.

Actually the reason is simpler—musicians don’t want to play last year’s music. So they write new music, and since one can’t simply imitate last year’s music, what comes out is different, often radically so. And the direction is nearly always toward expansion, a larger template—chromaticism, with 12 notes, rather than diatonicism, with eight; shifting tonal centers rather than maintaining them; the use of formerly proscribed discords. And ears which haven’t caught up with the change may be put off.

The solution to that is simply to listen to more new music. May there be plenty more chances for that.

 

 

 

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