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Music for Solo Cello
Cassado: Suite for solo cello I. Preludio - Fantasia II. Sardana (Danza) III. Intermezzo e danza finale Ysaye: Sonate Op. 28 for solo cello I. Lento e sempre sostenuto II. Poco allegretto e grazioso III. Adagio IV. Allegro Tempo fermo Ligeti: Sonate for solo cello I Dialogo II Capriccio Kodaly: Suite Op. 8 for solo cello I. Allegro maestoso ma appassionato II. Adagio III. Allegro molto vivace ---------------- When Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six cello suites around the year 1720, they were labeled "6 Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso." This curious title can be explained by the fact that it was a novelty at the time to write for cello alone, an example that would not be followed any time soon: not counting the various solo cello studies, capriccios, and other pieces composed by cellists for educational purposes, one needs to wait nearly two centuries before finding important repertoire in the medium. The famous Catalan cellist Pau Casals (1876-1973) was partially responsible for the rebirth of the solo cello repertoire: his "discovery" of Bach's cello suites at the beginning of his career and his subsequent efforts to propagate them helped convince the younger generation of composers to write for solo cello. The four works presented on this CD illustrate the rise of the modern solo cello repertoire. Common characteristics of this collection include a powerful rhetorical discourse, a rhapsodic character, and a complete technical mastery in writing for the instrument. That the four composers represented here had an excellent knowledge of the cello came from their own practical experience: Zoltán Kodály and György Ligeti had studied cello before becoming composers, the famous Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe was competent enough to play the cello part in private chamber music evenings, and Gaspar Cassadó, Casals's student, was a celebrated cello virtuoso. Kodály's Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 (1915) and Cassadó's Suite for Cello Solo (1925) are colored with regional flavor. As early as 1905, Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) had traveled with Bartók to record the peasant and popular music of Central Europe. Reminiscences of these ethnomusicological travels are present in Kodály's sonata, not only in the imitation of traditional instruments (violin, percussion, cimbalom, etc.) and their modes of playing, but also in the poetic description of the landscapes in which the music was born. Perhaps in a more folkloric way but still with much panache and poetry, Gaspar Cassadó (1897-1966), in his Suite for Solo Cello, imitates flamenco singing and guitar playing. He also quotes the Catalan sardana dance with it's introduction for flabiol (Catalan piccolo recorder), it's grotesque cobla (traditional Catalan ensemble), and indispensable nostalgic solos played by the tible (Catalan shawm). Like Fritz Kreisler, Cassadó was accused of musicological crimes: he attributed some of his own compositions to famous composers of the past such as Frescobaldi, Couperin, Boccherini, and Schubert, calling them "transcriptions." A good example of Cassadó's skill in pastiche can be found in the second movement, Sardana, at the expression marking burlesco: here he literally forces the cellist to imitate the approximate intonation of a traditional village ensemble by writing a series of unisons in such wide fingering spans that no cellist can play them in tune. We should not forget to mention that the first theme of Cassadó's suite is an embellishment of the opening of Kodály's sonata, a nod to the older Hungarian composer. György Ligeti (1923-2006) wrote the two movements of his Sonata for Solo Cello at a five-year interval. The first part, composed in 1948 for a young cellist with whom he was secretly in love, consists of a musical dialogue between a woman and a man. The composer's gift was not reciprocated, however, and the work was left unperformed until Ligeti added a second movement in 1953 in response to a famous female cellist (with whom he was not in love, as the composer tells us), who commissioned a full sonata from him. During the communist period, the Hungarian Composer's Union refused to allow the work to be published or performed on the grounds that the second movement was too modern. This might amuse us today, because the work - composed under the influence of Kodály and Bartók - is much more traditional than Ligeti's later compositions. Like Cassadó and Casals, the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was a great admirer of Bach's solo works and among the first to include them on his concert programs. Ysaÿe shows his devotion to Bach in his Violin Sonata No. 2 "Obsession," where he quotes the opening of the Partita for Solo Violin in E-major. Although there are no direct quotations from Bach's solo violin works in Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 28 (1923), we sense nevertheless that the famous violinist was more familiar with Bach's writing for solo violin than solo cello. This can be heard in the many chords and detailed contrapuntal writing, in Bach's solo cello works, chords are less frequent and the polyphonic lines are distributed in a more arpeggiated fashion. Ysaÿe's cello sonata, not as well-known as his six sonatas for violin but sharing many of the same difficulties, includes the composer's own fingerings. The work was dedicated to the Belgian cellist Maurice Dambois, with whom - along with pianist Yves Nat - Ysaÿe had formed a trio. While Pau Casals played a crucial role in the development of the solo cello repertoire at the beginning of the twentieth century, cellists such as Siegfried Palm and Mstislav Rostropovich inspired the following generations of composers. One needs only to reflect on composers such as Dallapiccola, Zimmermann, Henze, Scelsi, Britten, Sessions, Penderecki, Xenakis, Dutilleux, Ginastera, and Berio to understand the richness and diversity of the modern solo cello repertoire, which we hope to present to you in future recordings. NICOLAS DELETAILLE - TRANSLATION THOMAS SVATOS Nicolas Deletaille After having received his musical education in Belgium and in the USA, Nicolas Deletaille has begun his professional life as a concert performer. In the same time, he has recorded the Bach six Cello Suites, the Beethoven five Cello Sonatas, major works from the solo repertoire (Kodály, Cassadó, Ysaÿe, Ligeti) as well as chamber music CDs (Schubert, Dvorák, Franck, Tchaikovsky,...) Nicolas Deletaille has also earned distinction as an arpeggione player by recording the Schubert arpeggione sonata in the rare original arpeggione version with the vienese maestro Paul Badura-Skoda on an original 1820 pianoforte. Nicolas Deletaille has collaborated extensively with composers of our time. He has given approximately 50 world premiere creations, most of which were pieces written for him by composers from Belgium, France, Taiwan, USA, Italy, England, Switzerland, Korea, Norway and Canada. Nicolas Deletaille is currently a faculty member of the Eastern Mediterranean University, TRNC. Français Quand Johann Sebastian Bach composa ses six suites pour violoncelle vers 1720, elles furent baptisées « 6 Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso ». Ce titre curieusement redondant s'explique par l'originalité d'écrire à cette époque pour violoncelle seul. Cet exemple ne sera d'ailleurs pas suivi de longtemps : mis à part d'innombrables études, caprices et autres exercices de virtuosité, écrits par les violoncellistes eux-mêmes dans un but purement pédagogique, il faudra attendre que le célèbre violoncelliste catalan Pau Casals se fasse l'ambassadeur des Suites de Bach lors de ses tournées de concerts à l'aube du XXe siècle pour que des compositeurs se montrent peu à peu enclins à écrire des œuvres importantes pour violoncelle seul. Les quatre œuvres reprises sur ce CD, composées au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle, s'inscrivent dans la cadre de ce développement du répertoire pour violoncelle seul. Elles ont en commun un discours rhétorique puissant, un c- Shop: odax
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