The young cello student before him smiles, but plainly hasn't a clue what he is talking about. The old man explains that every unit of musical syntax, be it a phrase, a melody, a movement or an entire work must be thought of as having the shape - and the effect - of a rainbow.
It should lift the listener from their current state to one of higher emotion and awareness, and then allow them to absorb that experience before being lifted yet again. The final effect should be one of joy, humility and gratitude for the gifts bestowed by the creator/composer.
The old man is Pablo Casals, the great Catalan musician who is credited with lifting his instrument - the cello - from relative neglect to its current status alongside the violin and piano as a means of musical expression. The cello lesson was one of a series of masterclasses offered by Casals in 1960 at UC Berkeley, captured on kinescope and still found on YouTube.
Among the millions of people who have been touched by Casals is Steven Isserlis, who loves what Casals said, loves the music he made, and, apparently, loves all the rest of us enough to devote the extraordinary assortment of talents he was born with to bringing Casals' message of joy, gratitude and peace over a long career as one of the world's most acclaimed cellists, teachers and writers on music.
With the help of Kevin Hekmatpanah, Professor of Music at Gonzaga University and conductor of the Gonzaga Orchestra, Isserlis brought that message to Spokane; first, in a masterclass on Monday, and then in a concert with the Gonzaga Orchestra in the Father Bernard Coughlin Theater at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center at Gonzaga.
During his masterclass, Isserlis made no mention of rainbows, but he did ask - and quite frequently - "What is the story?" as a means of making Casals' point that the performer must not merely play the right notes at the prescribed tempo, but must build, advance and convey for the listener the significance of what they are playing.
Merely making a lovely sound or dazzling the listener with technical brilliance betrays both the gifts the player has been granted and the gift of that tiny bit of the composer's soul contained in every work. Judging from the awe-inspiring display of knowledge he casually displayed during the masterclass, Isserlis attempts to determine the "story" a composer wishes him to convey by learning absolutely everything that might have affected the composer, everything that might help us understand what he wrote, everything that has been written or recorded that might shed light on the piece, and, most especially, absolutely everything in the score, whether it is meant to be played on the cello or not.
The point of all this learning is not to appear learned, or to avoid censure from the learned, but (remember Casals) to bring beauty, wisdom and joy to the hearts of those listening, and that is just what Isserlis did on Tuesday night, when he was joined by the Gonzaga Orchestra conducted by Hekmatpanah in performances of the two concertos for cello composed by Charles Camille Saint Saens (1835-1921), one, in A minor Op. 33 (1872), and another, in D minor Op. 119 (1902).
Far from stiff and academic, Isserlis' playing was utterly free and unencumbered by any sort of restriction, intellectual or physical. He seemed to exert hardly any effort, but rather to allow the music to spring spontaneously from his Stradivarius while he merely listened carefully with the same smile on his face that one saw throughout the audience.
He listened not only to his own playing, but to that of everyone in the orchestra behind him, since he knew all their parts as well as his own, and smiled and nodded with pleasure as Saint Saens' immaculately crafted tapestries unfolded. In both concertos, Isserlis exhibited the most astonishing range of color, which he could control at all volume levels. Especially at levels barely above a whisper - fully audible, thanks to the superb acoustics of the hall - the expressivity of Isserlis' playing held us in thrall.
Both of Saint Saens' concertos are true "concertante" works; that is, their significance can only be realized through an inseparable partnership between soloist and orchestra. One had to admire the excellence with which Hekmatpanah guided the orchestra through these subtle and demanding scores. The D minor Concerto is one of the best known and widely admired works in the cello repertoire. Many regard it as the greatest concerto written for the instrument. The gradual development of the relationship between the cello and the orchestra is one of the work's most important features, and it was superbly well-realized in Tuesday's performance.
Even more remarkable was the revelation of the Second Concerto, which is far less well known than the First, though the quality of its workmanship and inspiration are no less fine. The tenderness and intimacy of the second movement, and the subtlety of its dialogue between orchestra and soloist, stand in comparison with any concerto in the repertoire, regardless of composer or instrument.
As an example of a musician's ability to achieve intimate communication with an audience, however, nothing in the evening quite equaled Isserlis' solo encore: an arrangement of "Song of the Birds" by one of music's greatest communicators, Casals.
While the appearance in Spokane by such a celebrated and sought-after soloist may have been the bigger draw of the evening, it was hardly the audience's sole cause for gratitude. Also on the program were two masterpieces that are cornerstones of the orchestral repertoire: Beethoven's Overture to "Egmont," from the suite of music he composed in 1809-10 to accompany the play of that name by the greatest poet and dramatist of the Enlightenment, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 in A Op. 90, commonly known as the "Italian" Symphony.
While both performances gave us cause to admire the excellent playing of the orchestra in both concerted and solo passages, they also made us aware of how fortunate we are to have a musician of the caliber of Hekmatpanah at the helm of our community orchestra. The most remarkable aspect of this orchestra's playing, not only in this instance, but throughout the past decade, is its consistent focus on communicating the specific emotional and intellectual content of the wide range of music it performs, and this is down to the talent and dedication of Prof. Hekmatpanah.
From the moment he steps onto the podium, he radiates energy to the players of the orchestra, indicating through a repertoire of specialized gestures not only when a phrase should begin and how fast it should be played, but with how much energy and what pattern that energy should take. His focus never seems to flag, which keeps his players from forgetting that there are no insignificant passages and that each has its place in the rainbow.
Hekmatpanah plainly has decided the story that each piece has to tell, and is exceptionally effective in guiding his players to put it across. That is why, while what we hear may occasionally show some imperfections in ensemble and while intonation may sometimes wander, communication is always strong, vivid and compelling.