Next Level Cellist Musicality Issue

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SPOTLIGHT CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CELLO SECTION When a great cello section plays in perfect ensemble together, there’s almost nothing in the world more exciting. Working with talented colleagues elevates your own playing, and it doesn’t get more talented than the men and women of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra cello section! With an impressive 11 musicians anchoring an already stellar orchestra, we want to recognize great musicianship and find out what makes this one of the best jobs in the country. In an orchestra as dynamic and precise as the Chicago Symphony, each section holds a key to creating the magic that audiences and record buyers count on from the group. Section member Brant Taylor has been playing with the orchestra for 16 years, and takes pride that the section is “widely regarded by our colleagues as one of the best sections in the orchestra. One of my section’s valuable contributions to the CSO is rhythmic stability.” Precision of rhythm is one of the most crucial elements in a successful ensemble, and in many ways this is the distinguishing point between a “good” interpretation and a “great” one. The CSO section is unquestionably armed with a great deal of experience. Veteran players bring wisdom and perspective from their time in the Grant Park, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Florida, and Winnipeg Symphonies, to name a few. Brant Taylor describes his initial impression of playing with the Chicago Symphony: “I remember being swept up by the tremendous energy and sound of the CSO in concert, particularly in big works like Mahler symphonies and Strauss tone poems. Imagine a car that has an extra gear that other cars don’t have.” Small wonder that a 2008 Gramophone survey of the world’s greatest orchestras placed the CSO at #5, and first of all American orchestras. Many musicians share the credit for their recognition with a string of strong leaders in front of the orchestra from Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, to Bernard Haitink. The orchestra has escaped the fate of some peer orchestras, not languishing during lengthy searches for music directors. These maestri are “musicians that value elegance and refinement,” says Taylor. This rare musicianship has allowed the CSO to sink its teeth in traditionally difficult repertoire for symphony orchestras, the more nimble and transparent works of composers like Mozart and Schubert. The orchestra also finds new inspiration by tackling less familiar works, bringing to life rare gems introduced by Muti thanks to his diverse tastes and experiences. in person to experience the true power of their performances. The unpredictability, the spontaneous moments driven by each person in the orchestra are rarely matched by any orchestra in the world. When contemplating the philosophy of the cello section, Taylor theorizes, “We play the way we play, and the combination of what we all have to offer as individuals makes a result greater than the sum of its parts.” ■ SELECTED VIEWING: • Verdi Requiem, live in concert with Riccardo Muti This video has lots of great closeup shots of the action throughout the orchestra. Be sure to check out 58:45 - The opening of the Offertory is a great feature of this dynamic section in action. • Mahler Symphony No. 6, Bernard Haitink The orchestra performs at Royal Albert Hall with such an incredible range of colors and timbres and the legendary brass sound augmented by more horns than one can count. Great cello moments at 9:35, 21:25, and an incredibly menacing moment at 1:04:45. If you only have time for the highlights reel, don’t miss the hammer strike, start at 1:06:30 for the buildup! CHICAGO PERFORMS. SO WILL YOU. Perhaps one of the most impressive elements of the cello section is the diversity of playing backgrounds represented by its members. Coming from all over the world, each player was selected to enhance the greater whole of the ensemble. Says Taylor, “I treat the section like a large chamber ensemble. I did not have to modify or compromise my artistic personality in any way to play in my section.” All great orchestras are at their core a collection of great artists, who make individual and group decisions spontaneously in concerts. No player reaches the level of the CSO without forming strong artistic opinions, and the sensitivity and adaptation that takes place, even in a single phrase, create unique results in every performance. This artistic melting pot is the essence of live music, and it is the reason an orchestra like the Chicago Symphony needs to be seen 10 SPRING 2014 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST
Efe Baltacigil Inspiration, Execution, Education I’ve been thinking for weeks about what I would say about this. I think there are 2 ways to look at this. One would be the technical and objective way, and the other would be the reactive and inspired dimension, which is hard to explain. INSPIRATION Part of being a human being is having an individual voice and a desire to express yourself. We musicians are fortunate to have means beyond words to do this. It’s inevitable, once you start to play an instrument, that you should eventually want to say something with it. I think that string players in particular are lucky, because we have a great deal of flexibility and variety in our tone colors, our articulations, and the way we use time. I grew up in a very musical family, and was always drawn to music thanks to inspiration from them. My father is a bass player, and I grew up listening to him play the Bottesini Concerto and Grand Duo and other virtuosic repertoire. From the age of 3 or 4 on, my mother gave me a tiny handheld radio when I went to bed, and would put on Istanbul’s classical music station. These days, I am proud that my two younger brothers are also extremely accomplished musicians. My middle brother Fora has held double bass positions in the Minnesota Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic; my youngest brother Poyraz is studying at my alma mater, the Mimar Sinan University conservatory, and is doing some wonderful things on the cello and winning concerto competitions. What was really spectacular about Fora was his progress at a young age, studying with our father. I may be exaggerating, but it seemed like he had only been playing a few weeks before he started playing things I didn’t think were possible on a bass. It may have been a lucky break that my father took a trip to the US when I was a child and brought back an Edgar Meyer CD called Work in Progress from the airport. He played the CD for us, and for the first time we heard a bass playing Wieniawski’s violin music, and it was incredible! We listened to that CD day and night. Fora went on to study with Edgar at Curtis, as well as with Hal Robinson, and I’m sure that having this early childhood hero to aspire to allowed Fora to do some of the incredible things he’s done. I was very lucky to play beside Fora last year in front of the Berlin Philharmonic - we performed the Bottesini Grand Duo, and I played the violin part on cello, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting. This was an incredible honor for me, especially because we did it at the end of the orchestra’s European tour, in Istanbul and Izmir in front of 20,000 people. It was really a dream come true for us, and sharing a stage with my younger brother was unbelievable. It can do a lot for your success to surround yourself with gifted musicians and keep exposing yourself to inspirational people. Two musicians alive today are particularly special to me. If you’re ever able to attend a rehearsal with either of them, you must take that opportunity, because the rehearsals are where the ideas and inspiration come alive. One is the fantastic conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. The way he rehearses is inspired - he’ll make you play a phrase, and you’ll realize that you’ve played it so much better than you’ve ever imagined. He can bring you to that 150% level you didn’t think you had. The other musician who does this extremely well is Yo-Yo Ma. Whether it’s chamber music or solo playing, he can look in your eyes and it brings you to this level of musicianship that includes you in his mastery. Ma also inspires this incredibly generous musical feeling. You end up playing on a level that you never could have imagined reaching. There is a talent to sharing your music making and understanding, and these two are perfect examples. They are both very self-sufficient people, and very happy with what they have achieved. They may have experienced struggles, but they are mostly struggles to achieve greater things musically and in life. I think that’s the key to being happy with what you are doing, to always be challenging yourself to do better at the things you love and care about. I think those are very important qualities to have to try and make better music. It’s truly difficult to say what it is Rattle and Ma are doing to be so inspirational. What’s very obvious is the love that they both have for every single note and the space between each note. You feel as though they’re focused on that in-between space, something you can’t quite perceive. It drives you to seek the immense beauty in each tiny increment of time. When you play with someone so committed, it’s hard not to give in to that passion and feel it yourself. You end up striving to do better yourself, and you end up doing it almost subconsciously, playing to the limits of your ability. They invite you to share in a common, powerful love for music making. It is true that some people from an early age find music comes easily, while others struggle and find it unnatural. Some people didn’t choose to begin learning music, they were forced to by parents or educators. It makes sense to me that not everyone feels phrases internally right away. Others desperately need music to express the things they have to say. It’s a wonderful outlet for emotions, and a very important part of many people’s lives. If you find yourself trying to teach somebody who doesn’t have that emotional connection, I think that helping them make one is more productive and important than any technique work. Looking forward to the rest of their lives, you will be helping them move many steps closer to fulfillment playing with other enthusiastic colleagues of any skill level. If you can help a person achieve that Yo-Yo Ma/Simon Rattle level of inspiration, you will have done an extraordinary thing! EXECUTION As a musician, you will collect knowledge from almost everyone you interact with. At one of my first cello lessons in Istanbul, my teacher Ihsan Kartal told me never to accent the end of a phrase. SPRING 2014 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 11
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Next Level Cellist Musicality Issue

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