Anybody in Thailand got a good cello concerto for sale? If so, get it ready by next Tuesday. One of the world's greatest cellists is coming to Bangkok, and his reputation for playing original cello concertos is as celebrated as his performances.
Raphael Wallfisch, who will perform with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and conductor Martin Yates in "Raphael Wallfisch Plays Elgar", is one of those rare (one is tempted to say ethereal) artists whose background, history and recordings — he has more records than any cellist living or dead — are unique. So unique that he would literally not have existed without the cello.
His mother had been cellist with the Auschwitz concentration camp "Girls Orchestra". When she was selected for death one of the guards said: "No, we cannot kill her. She is the cellist."
Emigrating to England after the war, married to a concert pianist, her son Raphael was a natural for the cello, his work so prodigious that he was winning countless prizes in England and America. But instead of sticking to the "normal" cello repertoire, Wallfisch has commissioned, discovered and sought out cello concertos from the rarest composers.
In fact, he never recorded Elgar's Cello Concerto, which he will play in Bangkok, until recently. Wallfisch felt he had an "obligation" to find other composers who needed recordings.
True, his choice of music here is not one of the "rare" concertos, but even the familiar Cello Concerto by Sir Edward Elgar gets the special Raphael Wallfisch treatment. Rather than the usual score, Wallfisch chose to use Elgar's original directions, unedited. Little is changed, but the cellist is again showing his utter honesty to the composer.
As the definitive online review site ArkivMusic states: "To those schooled in the romantic lyrical school of du Pré, Wallfisch gives his work a more muscular, less long-golden-sunset feel. It grows on me with every listening."
The Elgar Cello Concerto, to this writer, seems particularly fitting for the Thai audience. The work, one of the composer's final major pieces, is never insipidly sweet or over-romantic. It is grand, magisterial, the product of a man who revered the British monarchy and was ready to let out his emotions without any hesitation.
And any listener who hears Raphael Wallfisch play this work realises that it reflects his own personality: open-hearted, filled with energy and determination.
The Concerto is one of two Elgar works that feature. Another Elgar on the programme is his first Pomp And Circumstance March. The title (taken from Shakespeare's Othello) is known to graduate students all over the world, and forms the music to Land Of Hope And Glory (the words are not by Elgar, though as an ardent nationalist he approved them).
Edward Elgar was the British nationalist incarnate, and his life, from 1857 to 1934, enveloped musical nationalism of all forms. Most Central European composers tried to write in the German style. But Antonin Dvorák, with the encouragement of Brahms, wrote in his own Czech style.
Thus the New World Symphony, Dvorák's most popular work, is a strange contradiction. Dvorák spent a few years in America, appreciating American music and people, but was always homesick for his Bohemian homeland. So we have a symphony which supposedly celebrates America — but which is Czech through and through.
Everybody knows the theme of the second movement, sometimes sung as Going Home. Some even say it's a quote from American folk music. But no, it's original — and it could be as much Czech as American.
This is the piece to finish off a romantic, but never sentimental, concert. The New World Symphony was composed by a man who, like Wallfisch, always knew where he was going musically. In fact, Wallfisch's playing of the Dvorák concerto for cello has been called the finest ever recorded.
Whether Elgar, Dvorák or Vivaldi or any of the other composers he has played, Wallfisch has a particular philosophy.
"My goal is to play theatrically without being theatrical. If somebody wants to be more showy, I suppose they can do it," he said. "But for me the goal is to project to the audience the power of the music."
- "Raphael Wallfisch Plays Elgar" as part of the "Great Artists Concert Series 2015" with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Martin Yates
- Tickets priced at 400, 800, 1,200, 1,600 and 2,000 baht are now available at all ThaiTicketMajor outlets, visit www.thaiticketmajor.com.
- Contact the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation on 02-255-6617/8, 02-254-4954 or visit www.bangkoksymphony.org.
