Next Level Cellist Musicality Issue

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