Novo's Marina Hasselberg Opportunely Channels Guilhermina Suggia
Sunday, November 23, 2014
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| St. Philip's Anglican, Sunday November 23, 2014 |
On Sunday I went to a
concert held at St. Philip's Anglican Church on the West-side. It featured the Novo Ensemble (in this iteration, as it varies, but always with Marina Hasselberg on cello), with Mark McGregor,
flute and Mark Haney on double bass. The music, all brand new, featured works from
composers Jordan Nobles, Michael Oesterle, James Maxwell, Luc Martin and
Nicolás González Thomas. All five of the compositions were new without being
(to use an old, and I believe exhausted phrase), Bartók-like.
The program was
played a week before at Pyatt Hall on Seymour
Street (around the corner from the Orpheum) but I
waited because of financial restrictions (entry to the church concert was by
donation!) but also knowing that the acoustics of St. Philip's are as good as
they get in this city. And when you consider that you are surrounded by
beautiful stained-glass windows you cannot lose.
Two of the pieces I
thought special. The first Lux by Jordan Nobles had the flute playing a melody
while the cello and bass played an extended and recurrent bass line. John
Oliver, noted Vancouver
composer, who was present refused to out and out agree with me that Lux was
sort of a chaconne. His statement to we was, “Lux is what it is and that’s it
and I will not resort to baroque terminology.” Lux had Mark McGregor playing
what this amateur would call harmonics, some so low key you might not have
heard them had you been elsewhere in a venue without enhanced acoustics. Mark
Haney pretty well tapped (loudly sometimes) the lower tip of his bow on his
instruments cords.
The second piece, it
moved me immediately, and particularly in the second movement was Michael Oesterle’s Rambler Rose (a two
movement work). It left me with an impression, a nostalgia, that this was something inspired by Bach’s
suites for unaccompanied cello. That Hasselberg was indeed playing solo cello
added to that pleasant feeling. Perhaps it had all to do that these
days, unless one looks for them, it is not all that common to be exposed to
contemporary pieces for solo cello.
Mark McGregor's flute was never strident to my ears and Mark Haney's bass was a pleasure to listen to, for once as a featured instrument and not part of the background bass sound of so many orchestras. All in all a concert
to savour and to also make me look forward to the next installment of the Novo
Ensemble. In a short Hasselberg has managed to penetrate two camps of
music whose fans seem to be apart. With her endpinned cello she has found eager
new music composers willing to write for her and with her baroque cello she has
participated in concerts of Early Music Vancouver. Surely could she not be the
bridge between these folks that seem to have irreconcilable differences?
But this blog does not
end here!
After the first
performed work, Nobles’ Lux two elderly ladies behind me were giggling. I
turned around and I said, “You are probably commenting on the cellist’s shoes.”
One of them put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Bless you, yes!”
In 1964 one of my
first girlfriends gave me Bach’s Suites for unaccompanied cello played by Pablo
Casals. It was an Angel recording. When my scratched records became unplayable
I purchase sometime in the beginning of the 80s the CD version even though I
had no CD player.
Cellists, as far as I
was concerned were men. It was a man’s instrument.
How a cellist holds
the instrument has been a running controversy since Antonio Vivaldi’s time at
Ospedale della Pieta in Venice
in the early 18th century. When his all-girl orchestra entertained
convent guests they were hidden from view by an iron lattice.
Some say it was
because some of the women were deformed but most likely it had to do with the
way women cellists (men, too) had to hold the instrument firmly between their
legs. The difficulty for women holding a cello in a lady-like manner (side
saddle?) may have contributed to the paucity of women cellists before the 20th
century.
That did not inhibit
Joyce Menting, the first woman I ever saw playing a baroque cello for Vancouver’s Pacific
Baroque Orchestra at a performance I attended in 1992. I was amazed. She held
her cello firmly between her legs, as there was no endpin on her baroque
instrument to stabilize it on the floor. In fact some say that the invention of
the endpin ushered in women cello players as it relaxed the woman’s hold (her
legs) on the cello.
Though the endpin was in use as early as the 17th
century, it did not meet with universal approval until the late 19th
century. The benefits of playing with the endpin were important for all
cellists but particularly so for women, for whom it was a virtual necessity”
feminine grace was saved in the more upright position and relaxed posture
permitted by the pin. The use of the endpin is probably the main cause of the
sudden surge of women cellists in the late 1800s.
Russell A. Tilden,
“The Development of the Cello Endpin,”
Imago musicae, IV (1987)
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| With Mark McGregor |
Menting wore a black
skirt, fine stockings and black suede shoes. Her mascara seemed to be in the
same shade as her stockings.
Not too long after I
was sitting on the last row of the Orpheum’s ground floor with many older
concert goers in wheel chairs. The first half of the concert featured
Tchaikovsky’s Cello Concerto. The soloist was the beautiful Shauna Rolston who
was wearing tight black pants, a flimsy blouse and a snake armlet on her left
arm. After the interval the room literally emptied before the VSO started
Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 2. I was amazed as this symphony may have been
contemporary to many of the senior citizens present. Perhaps they had all come
for the Tchaikovsky and the bonus snake armlet.
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| With Mark Haney |
That cellist Marina
Hasselberg who plays both cello variants, the modern one with the endpin and the
baroque without is from Portugal is beautifully following the tradition of Guilhermina Suggia (1885-1950), also born in Portugal, who caused a fuss
and a minor scandal when she studied under Pablo Casals, became his mistress
(and some say she married him) who did away with the side saddle and brought
her own brand (besides her obvious virtuosity) of grace, glamour, fashion sense
to an instrument heretofore the domain of men.
Suggia dumped (some
say) Casals and moved to England
in the 1920s. It was there that Welsh painter Augustus John (his own
illegitimate daughter, Amaryliss Fleming became a well-known cellist) painted
Suggia’s portrait now in the Tate’s collection. Of the painting the Manchester
Guardian wrote, “It will serve to remind future generations that here was a
musician who matched the nobility of her art with that of her presence on the
concert platform.”
That of course
explains no doubt why the two women behind me were giggling at Hasselberg’s
exquisite high heel shoes, tight black pants and elegant old top, not to
mention freshly and surgically snipped bangs.
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| Madame Suggia - Augustus John - 1920/23 |
Watching Hasselberg
play on Sunday the words of Stephen Gwynn, “When Suggia Was Playing,” Country
Life Magazine, November 26, 1927 seem to be most appropriate:
It was a delight to see her, before each bout
began, sit up alert, balance and adjust her bow as a fencer balances his foil,
then settle herself with that huge tortoise between her knees, like a jockey sitting down to the ride: erect first
and watchful, till gradually, caught by the stream she created she swung with
it, gently, sleepily, languidly, until the mood shifted, the stream grew a
torrent and the group rocked and swayed almost to wreckage. Or again, she would
be sitting forward, taking her mount by the head, curbing it, fretting it, with
imperious staccato movements, mastering it completely – letting it free to
caracol easily, or once more break into full course, gathering itself in,
extending itself, in a wild gallop…And then at the end, with some long-drawn
sighing fall, or with one abrupt vehement clang of sound, she would finish,
would raise her bow high, in a gesture of dismissal, break the magic and come
to the top like a diver, a little breathless and smiling.
I welcome this triple injection of glamour, youth and virtuosity. Vancouver will profit.
I welcome this triple injection of glamour, youth and virtuosity. Vancouver will profit.
