Last night I had the absolute pleasure to attend the David Finckel & Wu Han performance in Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Finckel & Wu Han are a fabulous husband-and-wife cello & piano duo. I have a couple of their recordings, so I already knew how great they were, but being able to see the live in concert was a great experience.
I got to interview Wu Han the other week for work, and she was an absolute delight to talk to. She spoke at length about a new piece that was commissioned for them, that they premiered last night- Cello Sonata by Pierre Jalbert. When Wu Han was describing the sonata to me, and mentioning the difficulty, she said that she had to crawl inside the piano. I thought nothing of it at the time, but after the interview when I was reading through my notes, I remembered what she said. Now, Wu Han is a very eloquent speaker who used a lot of metaphors, so I didn’t know if she was speaking metaphorically, or if she was serious. So how could I miss out on the opportunity to find out?
One of the promotional photos we've been using of Finckel and Wu Han shows them seated in front of a flowering bush. There's one flower that's right about Wu Han's head, but in my mind, I always see that bright fuschia flower in her hair. So, somehow I expected her to be a little bit flamboyant. Her outfit definitely did not disappoint! It was this great beautiful black coat with eye-popping red and orange and purple... it almost looked like butterfly wings. And great bright red shoes.
Before the performance Wu Han spoke for a few minutes about the composer, and the work that went into creating the piece. This is one thing that I love – when artists give you their own thoughts and relationship with the piece. It’s not so interesting when it’s a Mozart concerto, because that stuff you can just get in the program notes. But for a new piece that was written especially for the performers? Fabulous!
I can’t remember her exact words, but right before they began Wu Han mentioned that she wasn’t going to hope that we enjoyed the piece. Rather, that we experience the piece, and I now understand what she meant. The Jalbert sonata is an exquisite piece, but not beautiful in the Romantic tradition of long, lyrical melodies. The Jalbert is beautiful because of all the great musical texture. Of course it has high notes and low notes and loud notes and soft notes, but it also explores the natural, but unusual, sounds the instruments make. The cello had great pizzicato sections, muted sections, and lots of different harmonics. The piano part had moments where she did indeed go into the piano and pluck the strings. Also sections where she dampened the strings with one hand, and played the keys with the other, which gave it a great percussive, pitched sound.
With some modern music (and modern theatre, and modern art), I wonder if the composer is just playing a joke on the performers and audience, to see how much junk they’ll put up with if it’s called “music”. Not at all with the Jalbert sonata. It is a great complex piece that feels very new and exciting, but it is also extremely enjoyable to listen to. I just hope David Finckel and Wu Han have the chance to record it!