(cello playing)
Everybody has doubts. You know,
whether they should devote their whole life to anything,
I think.
On the other hand,
there was never much question that I would be a musician.
My elder sisters are both professional musicians.
My father was a very keen amateur violinist.
My mother was a piano teacher.
My grandfather on my father's side was a famous pianist,
in his day, and composer.
And the dog, he was probably the most musical of us all,
actually, our dandie dinmont terrier.
He used to howl with such feeling.
I think I learned a lot
from him about how to play expressively.
(cello playing)
The first classical piece of music I fell in love
with as far as I remember was the Dvořák concerto
and I had this record of Rostropovich playing.
It was Sir Adrian Boult conducting.
And I used to listen just
to the first moment, over and over again.
Oh, I remember a big favourite was the Brahms D minor piano concerto.
It still is, but I bought this record
of Clifford Curzon playing it and I put on the record
and I jumped out of my skin at that first timpani exclamation.
And I loved that, of course.
So again, I listened to the first movement
of that every day for ages. Like most children,
one gets obsessed with one thing,
one listens or reads again and again and again.
(cello playing)
Why do you fall in love with somebody?
There's no explaining.
I mean, apart from that Schumann was a genius.
And as creative an individual as any composer
and cannot categorise his music.
His roots go well back into the past
but they also go way into the future.
He can just dream aloud in music.
But on the other hand, he's absolutely rock solid formally.
I mean, he absolutely knows what he's doing.
His imagination has no limits.
He knew the music of the past,
Going back to Di Lasso and things. He performed it as a conductor,
he conducted a choir and he did all this ancient music.
He was steeped in the ancient music
but what he wanted to express sort of required
sometimes a strange language.
I mean, it's really futuristic.
(cello playing)
As a young cellist,
you listen to records, or major concertos.
So I listened to various performances
of the Schumann concerto. I could hear it was
very nice music, but I just couldn't remember a note of it.
It just made no impression, it would go
in one ear out the other, which often happens with me.
And then somehow I heard Casals' recording of it.
And you know, it's not one of his best recordings
in a way. He was about 18 when he did it.
And that's quite a lot of strain
and I certainly don't play it anything
like he plays it, but it talked, it made sense.
And suddenly I could remember almost the whole piece.
It was extraordinary.
That's probably the strongest example I've had
of that happening to me.
So I've loved it ever since, but my
first time I tried to play it,
it was a disaster.
I played at my college Oberlin College in America,
it was not good.
I practised too much for it,
I think I was just too nervous.
But all that practise paid off in the end.
By the time I came back to it, it was starting to feel familiar.
Now I probably play it more than any other concerto.
I adore every note of it.
I think it's such a moving, gorgeous piece.
Schumann, I think is the most confessional
of all composers really.
I mean, he said that everything
in his life came out in his music.
If I'd met Schumann personally.
I probably wouldn't have got to know him
because he was so silent.
He was so awkward.
He was wonderful.
I mean, incredibly kind and generous, but a social disaster.
So the way one gets to know him is through his music.
The Concerto was written at a very good time in his life
because he just arrived at his new job in Dusseldorf.
And at that point he was enjoying it,
he was on a high. So there's a lot of happiness
in this piece.
There's a lot of love.
I mean, it is like a love song, I think.
But there is darkness, especially
in the central section, the development section,
as one calls it, of the first movement.
That's a real journey,
it's very different from the other movements.
You go through a journey.
I mean, you begin with these chords, from the orchestra
just like the sun rising
and then you start, the cello sings
its love song,
I think
(cello playing)
It's so gentle.
Wonderful. The phrase become stronger and it ends
with a big flourish, and goes into the orchestra first tutti.
It goes...
(cello playing)
It's very different.
And then the cello comes in after this big tutti,
the cello comes in sort of no, can't we be gentle...
(cello plays)
It takes us back to the land of dreams.
This leads to the middle section, the development section
in which it becomes much more disturbing
the orchestra's energy.
Right from the beginning,
we've had a sort of fairly ecstatic...
(cello plays)
... from the cellos, a happy bit.
But that becomes in the orchestra's hands,
in the beginning of the development...
(cello plays)
And then...
There's something more threatening about it, I think.
And eventually,
unfortunately, the aggressive warlike voice wins
the cello is sucked into it.
And what was here...
becomes...
(cello playing)
The same, but it sounds so different.
People never know that it's the same thing.
That's a stroke of genius, that.
And so we're left with this anger.
So what is going to happen?
Is it going to go with the bad guys or the good guys
as it were. And the cello sort of listens
and ruminates, and then it decides...
(cello plays)
We don't know where we are, we're in C sharp major
which is miles away in terms of relationship from the tonic.
And then...
(cello plays)
It sort of says please, can we go home?
And from that point on, we feel the way back.
And then it has wonderful little... Schumann is...
his little transitional passages either in between movements
or between sections that are just so magical in here.
(cello plays)
Where are we gonna go?
Aha!
And then we get home to the recapitulation,
the theme is back
we're in love again and all is well.
And then we have the slow movement, which is perfect.
F major is always his key of happiness or reassurance.
So yeah, there's something very special about the key
for him.
And indeed, this is an incredibly special moment.
It's got a solo cello in the orchestra and duet
which again, is a love duet, and it starts
with the falling fifth, which is supposed to be his Clara interval.
(cello plays)
All this falling fifths, it's so beautiful the slow movement,
but very short. It's just absolutely perfect as it is.
which the second flute starts.
And then he says, no, I don't want to leave my slow movement,
I don't want to leave my paradise.
(cello plays)
But it does.
And we get sort of, we have a stormy...
(cello plays)
A sort of exchange.
And that takes us into the last movement,
which again is full of joy.
And again, a lot of Clara intervals, it seems.
(cello plays)
Cello trading back and forth with winds and then
a gorgeous development, which brings in little tiny sort
of fragments from the first movement
and starts with a good Beatles modulation.
It's...
(cello plays)
It's very, he was obviously influenced by the Beatles.
And that wonderful development, which again, leads us back
as developments do, to a recapitulation of all the material.
And then we have an incredibly original accompanied cadenza
towards the end.
Schumann had been studying
and studied Handel's music a lot,
and there's a real recitative.
(cello plays)
Very noble.
And that just melts into G minor
which we've hardly seen at all through the whole piece.
(cello plays)
And we have these pizzicati
from the strings, like raindrops, gorgeous.
And then it leads us back
to not A minor, with which we started, but A major.
And he even brings in the scary motif from the first movement.
(cello plays)
As if to say, the demons are gone, I can cope with them now.
And it ends in joy.
(cello playing)
The Philharmonia is a lovely orchestra.
I probably played with them more than with
any other London orchestra.
I've recorded the music
of John Tavener with them.
and that's a lot of very slow playing.
And of course recording is a lot
of sitting around and things,
Philharmonia were perfect, their attitude.
It was great.
They were lovely.
And they've always been really welcoming.
I got a few friends there and
it's a very special orchestra, very nice atmosphere.
(cello plays)