"The talented cellist's lyricism and ability to project and communicate the music's narrative qualities ensures that there are enough distinctive musical signposts along the way to engage the listener." (Gramophone Magazine, Jul 2010)
"Strong musical personality, technically assured and capable of producing great beauty of tone. Tony Woollard is a performer who clearly will not only be moving on to very great things but is possessed of an unusual and welcome spirit of adventure." (International Record Review)
"Tony Woollard, whose clever idea this disc was, performs all the works superbly." (Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph)
Janacek at the Gate
DUBLIN - Theaters are closed here on Sunday - the Abbey, the Peacock, others are all dark - but hark! there are lights on at the entrance to the Gate Theatre. Ask what's happening, and you will be told that the cast of Brian Friel' new play, Performances, is giving a concert.
Intrigued by that puzzle, you go in and discover the Alba String Quartet holding sway in the theater, with a brief but excellent program of Schubert's Quartettsatz in C minor, Mozart's Quartet in E flat, Webern's Langsamer Satz, and Janacek's String Quartet No. 2.
This last item on the program, Janacek's 1928 Intimate Letters Quartet, provides for yet another "first", unless you have already attended a chamber-music concert that had been rehearsed nightly, with an audience, for over a month. This is how all those strange items come together: Friel's play is about Janacek and his decade-long pursuit of Kamilla Stosslova, a happily married 26-year-old when the composer, age 62, became possessed with her.
Quartet as Consummation
"Consummation" of the one-sided affair came in Quartet No. 2, an ecstatically happy, Tristan-passionate, achingly beautiful work by Janacek at 74, at the end of a troubled, but ultimately redeemed, life. The play - by the author of Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa - has a fictional graduate student researching Janacek's life, it brings in the already dead composer to answer her questions, and completes the cast with members of the Alba: Nicola Sweeney and Jana Ludvickova (violins), Fay Sweet (viola), and Tony Woollard (cello).
The musicians perform the first two movements of Intimate Letters off-stage, while the text of some of those letters is spoken and discussed on-stage; then the quartet plays on-stage and talks about the music while the actor playing Janacek (Ion Caramitru), contemplates some of letters, projected on the walls, in silence.
On Sunday then, the Alba Quartet musicians stepped out of their "roles" as the quartet in the play, and after playing what Richard Pine's program notes call this "massive soliloquy on longing and passion," more or less as background music for a month - and performed it, front and center, in its entirety, uninterrupted.
Young Quartet's Mature Sound
How was it? Glorious. The Alba is a young group, with a young, vigorous, somewhat raw sound, quite different from the end-of-life, Verdi "Falstaff"/Shakespeare "Tempest"-category Intimate Letters may be thought to require. And yet, the technically near-flawless, deeply-felt reading came across superbly. There are so many complexities and contradictions about this work, not least of it being in the music itself: Janacek had nothing but disdain for Wagnerian romanticism and "pompous chord progressions," but his two quartets are quintessentially romantic.
The Alba managed to resolve paradoxes all evening long: those of excess and classicism in the Schubert, elegance and deep feelings in the Mozart, chromaticism and gentle, "old-fashioned" tonality in the Webern, and - especially - bridging pain and happiness in Janacek's music the way the composer managed to accomplish that both in music and life.
Intimate Letters says one is never too old for passion; the Alba performance proved one is never too young to have mature wisdom of expression.
Janos Gereben.
San Francisco Classical Voice.
www.sfcv.org
Music for Solo Cello
TONY WOOLLARD
Venue: Walsworth Road Baptist Church - Hitchin
Date: 20 September 2007
Date: 20 September 2007
Programme:
- Bach: Cello Suite No 1
- Kodaly: Cello Sonata Opus 8
- Robert Saxton: Sonata for Solo Cello
- Britten: Cello Suite No 3
- (encore: Walton: Theme sans Variations)
This proved to be the longest recital Hitchin Music Matters has so far staged. Normally the full-length concert is contained well within the two-hour timeslot of 3 till 5pm. However, today was rather special.
A lot of people would feel that listening to a single string instrument for the best part of two hours would be too daunting. However, come the interval (after the Kodaly work) several there were saying it was the best concert we have ever put on. That Tony Woollard is arguably the finest musician we have ever platformed.
He began his recital with a famous old warhorse (if one can use that title for such a piece) the famous Cello Suite No 1 by Bach. Before he started to play, the soloist announced to the audience that we were all going on a long journey. His contact with the audience (disappointingly small though it was) was immediate and rapport was at once established. For Tony Woollard has a very engaging, and friendly manner and he also has a wonderful way of describing the most difficult things with such ease as to make the listener feel "Well, I already knew that…" The journey thus began somewhere around 1715 when the busy family man, Bach was in a hugely productive period. He was then around the same age as our soloist.
Around two hundred years later, Zoltan Kodaly wrote an absolute masterpiece. Debussy, now in his last years also wrote his cello sonata (with piano) in 1915. Kodaly's new work was a Sonata for solo cello and it contains many unusual features. First off, the soloist is required to tune the two lower of the cello down a semitone - thus we have B (instead of C) at the bottom then F sharp (instead of G) and then D and A at the top - as normal. This lends many new ways of saying things and although the instrument never sounds out of tune (in extremely fine hands) there are many other things happening in this work which had not happened before. There is a passage of extreme difficulty where there (appears) to be triple stopping as rapid notes are played with pizzicato notes going on at the same time in the depths. Pizzicato glissandi (new - not even Debussy had done this) occur and passages played sul ponticelli (the bow high up on the bridge… so many things. The whole sonata lasts for about half an hour and makes for a very strenuous end to a first part of a recital.
The audience was thrilled - not one word of dissent. All were amazed by the cellist skills and musicianship. A few minutes of talk - with musical illustrations was absolutely fascinating and what might have been something almost too difficult for many was appreciated by all. He had served the music well and given us his all in a 'death-defying' performance which struck the writer of this note as good as any.
Part two opened with a new work by Robert Saxton, a music professor at Oxford University. This piece - around twelve minutes long - was an interesting set of variations on a theme. The theme was discovered by another cellist - Stephen Isserlis. It was written by William Walton and was most likely the very last thing he ever wrote. Intended to be theme from which a set of variations would follow, Walton died before being able to do anything more with it. Isserlis took the manuscript to his friend, Saxton and begged him to do something with it. This the latter eventually did. He wrote a set of variations of the theme but, in great deference to the older composer, left the Theme itself to be heard last - thus giving Walton the last word. Of course, the early listener can hardly be expected to work out what the theme might sound like until it got there but it was a lovely piece and played most beautifully.
The concert's last programmed piece was the Third Cello Suite of Benjamin Britten. Britten wrote all three of his Suites for the great Russian cellist, Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich. Perhaps the greatest cellist who has ever lived played all three and was in the process of recording them, when, with two 'in the can' Britten died. Rostropovich was so upset by his friend's death that he could not play them any more.
Other cellists have played all three though and there are some fine recordings around. It is now a great hope that Tony Woollard will also record them - along with hosts of other works. Not least the Bach Suites.
Woollard played throughout with great artistry, technical skill and a humane warmth on his wonderful cello - unusually NOT an ancient piece but a magnificent instrument made by a lady called Viola! It is, he said, his millennium cello, built in 1999/2000 and it sounds lovely.
The concert ended with a full performance of the Walton Theme - played as elegantly and movingly as it could by a cellist who is surely going to be a great force (for good) in the cello music repertoire.
Dennis Day - Hitchin Music Matters
