The cellist Capuçon is back.
On the evening of May 17th, French cellist Gautier Capuçon, the artist-in-residence of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra this season, presented the Chinese mainland debut of an important work - "Distant World" under the baton of conductor Ye Yongshi. In addition to challenging the "hard bones", her old friend Ye Yongshi also conducted the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, performing Chen Qigang's "Paradise Lost", Ravel's "The Tomb of Coupland" and "Daphne and Chloe" Suite 2, bringing a musical evening with a French style to the audience in Shanghai on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France.
The arranger of "Distant Worlds" is Dietier, known as the "grandmaster of contemporary French composition", a universally recognized perfectionist. He only allowed a small part of his works to be published, and even "Distant World", a work that the world constantly praised, was an unintentional intervention after self-humility.
Finding it difficult to take on the task, Dietier withdrew from the Symbolist poet Baudelaire's plan to compose a music collection for the 100th anniversary of his death, but the composer could not resist the poet's artistic inspiration, and named the five movements of "Riddle", "Gaze", "Waves", "Mirror" and "Hymn" in "The Flower of Evil", to create "Distant World", which has been described as "one of the most important cello works of the 20th century", describing "something more abstract and pure" that he wanted.
When he first received an invitation from director Yu Long to perform this work, Capuçon was hesitant because it was too challenging. Although the two often collaborated on this concerto during Dietier's lifetime, "I remember the first time I played it was on his 90th birthday. But it's because of the familiarity that makes each performance more so that he cares more about perfection in each interpretation: "He was undoubtedly one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, and we worked together for five or six years until he died a few years ago." He is very discerning and very fastidious, so I am convinced that every detail he writes is what he wants, and his colors are very typical of Dithier's style. Capuçon told reporters in an interview.
Due to the high difficulty of this concerto, this performance has been highly anticipated. "When playing a concerto, the soloist usually recites the orchestral part as well, but Dietier can't memorize this piece at all, the east and west sentences are a bit 'fragmented', the beats are all disrupted, and it is difficult to find some 'formatted' things in classical music." A music scholar once said this before the performance.
It's also challenging for the band, because they may not be able to figure out what the cello is playing. This is a great test of the tacit understanding between the conductor, the orchestra and the soloist, who must work together like a precision instrument to overcome the difficulties of performance.
For the first time conducting "Distant World", conductor Ye Yongshi did a lot of homework. Before the solo joined, Ye Yongshi had several days of rehearsals with the band. "While I was familiar with the details of the score, I also listened to recordings of different cellists playing and compared and summarized the difficult passages so that I could pay more attention to them when Capuçon joined."
At the same time, there are many places to change the tempo in the work, Ye Yongshi calculates the number or scores the beat, so that the orchestra can be prepared first, and the technical problems need to be solved by the musicians. To Ye Yongshi's surprise and relief, the full practice done by the band members in advance played a role, and the whole rehearsal went very smoothly.
"It was a very efficient rehearsal, and the band was more mature than when I came 10 years ago, and they were very quick to master some new works or unfamiliar conducting styles."
After the performance, the audience's feedback should have dispelled Capuçon's initial concerns. Despite the difficulty of the repertoire, veteran fans were full of praise: "In the face of a series of complex pulls and pizzerails, bow strokes, glissandas, frequent changes in overtones, and the use of a lower bow to break the rhythm in the weak position, Capuçon performed it in one go and performed it very loosely, without the abrupt brightness of the strong notes and the dryness of the trebles, which is admirable." ”
"Distant World" is very different from the melodic cello concerto that the audience remembers. From the perspective of audience appreciation, Yip believes that such a work with a high technical and aesthetic threshold requires the listener to bring "another pair of ears" to discover the subtlety and ingenuity in the orchestration. "For example, the sound effects produced by the superposition of percussion instruments, harps, bass, etc., are one of the highlights of the whole song, and the subtlety can only be discovered by the audience one by one."