Town Music billed it as “A Cello Conspiracy,” but there are lots of other words to describe the great concert it presented Monday night at Fremont Abbey in Seattle. Four cellists from the Seattle Symphony: principal Efe Baltacigil, Meeka Quan DiLorenzo, Nathan Chan, and Eric Han presented a program of works, several of which were familiar to the sold-out audience in their full orchestral guise, but many of which were also very difficult when four cellos are approximating an entire orchestra.
It’s amazing how they did, and the four were obviously having a great time playing them. It was also obvious what a huge amount of work they had done in preparing this concert. Their precise synchronization was superb. The four took turns taking the lead, and in the second half they were joined by Joshua Roman, artistic director of Town Music, onetime principal cello in the SSO, now with a solo career.
There were 13 different works on the program, none long, most arranged, ranging from the 15th-century’s Josquin des Prez and 17th-century’s Purcell, to “Kaleidoscope,” written for cello duet recently by DiLorenzo’s composer husband Tony, and the world premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s four-cello version of his “On Being Wrong.” It was all very casual in that there were no program notes, and the different players often chatted briefly about the upcoming work—how it was chosen, or how they came across it.
The concert began and ended with two well-known opera overtures, for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
From the first moments of the “Figaro,” the stylish playing and energy they put into it, the crispness, the full but not forced sound in the resonance of the Abbey, heralded a couple of hours of enjoyable listening. Following this was Mozart’s Sonata in D major, K 381, originally for piano four hands, imaginatively arranged by Valter Dešpalj, at times using plucked strings excerpt for the melody line.
The work they put in was manifest in the Cerrone piece, so together were they with the sudden dynamic changes, and the “music of spheres” feel in the bell-like harmonics. They played an excerpt from Wagner’s “Coro dei Pelligrini” from Tannhäuser, one of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, a contemporary work by Esmail for three cellos (with overtones of Bollywood, according to DiLorenzo, who gave that tip to the audience), and ended up before intermission with Paganini’s “Moses” Variations for two cellos (originally for two violins), played by Han and Chan. Paganini’s music is always full of spectacular technical fireworks, and this is no exception, but surely more tricky on cello than violin given the need to go from one end of the instrument to the other at warp speed and completely in tune. This was indeed spectacular, an awesome feat of technical ability by these two musicians who played with panache and obviously enjoyed themselves very much doing it.
The early music was a total change of pace. Roman joined the four in Josquin’s Untitled, and Purcell’s Fantasia upon one note, in which the players eschewed vibrato almost entirely, giving close to that open string sound which is a hallmark of the viola da gamba. Both are slow, serene pieces and the intricacies of the Purcell came through clean and clear. Anne Wilson’s Lament was composed after the death of Matthews Shepherd. Its five movements go from desolation, through some jaunty syncopation and finally to acceptance and the performers gave it the emotional content it needed.
Before the final, wildly fun Rossini, there came Nimrod from Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations. Always impressive, this piece translated wonderfully well to five cellos. All of its resonance and slow majesty was there.
The audience was on its feet applauding until the group played one encore: Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” a bit long for an encore but the audience didn’t seem to mind at all.
