MUSIC: Cellist explores ‘evolution’ in ASO concerts
By Eric E. Harrison (Contact)
LITTLE ROCK — For the first time in 17 years, Zuill Bailey will finally get a chance to spend some time in Arkansas.
Bailey, a cellist, will help the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Itkin open their 2008-09 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks season as soloist in Antonin Dvorak’s Cello Concerto on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall.
He’ll also stay over to open the orchestra’s River Rhapsodies chamber music series at 7 p.m. Tuesday with pianist Norman Boehm and the orchestra’s Quapaw Quartet in the Great Hall of the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave.
“I’ve always enjoyed Little Rock very much,” says Bailey, who has soloed with the orchestra twice before.
Bailey toured Arkansas in September 1991 when he was 19 and a student at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore as the National Federation of Music Clubs’ Young Artist competition winner. “And I was given this Arkansas Traveler certificate signed by Bill Clinton,” he recalls.
“That was the last time I was able to really spend a great amount of time there. I think I was there for nine days. That was just so terrific.
“Over the years I’ve been able to come back under different auspices, and this is a visit I’m very much looking forward to because I’m actually going to have time to look around again. It’s been 17 years since that long trip. I’ve played with the symphony since then, but it’s usually a ‘quick in and quick out.’” LATER WORK
The Cello Concerto is a hugework and one of the last ones Dvorak wrote, after hearing cellistcomposer Victor Herbert play his second concerto - a piece Bailey champions - in New York.
“This piece, the Dvorak, is incredibly invigorating and exhausting at the same time,” Bailey says. “It’s a different kind of feeling, a very satisfying feeling. I’m not usually exhausted physically, as [much] as I am emotionally. In many ways you feel like you’ve summed up a life in about 40 minutes.
“And that’s why everyone keeps wanting to hear it - it’s all-encompassing.”
For Tuesday’s chamber concert, “I’m actually reflecting upon my first visit here,” he says. “I’m playing the piece that was the focal point of that tour, the Schubert ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata.”
The piece, which Franz Schubert composed for the nowextinct six-string arpeggione - sort of halfway between a viola and a cello - has become a standard, though, according to Bailey, under-played part of the cello repertoire.
“We are configuring an unusualassortment of combinations,” he explains. “It’s solo cello, it’s cello and quartet, it’s cello and piano - it’s lots of different things.
“I’m kind of making this to feature the evolution of the cello and why I love it so much.”
The concert will open with Pieces en Concert by Francois Couperin, which Bailey will play with the quartet - Eric Hayward and Meredith Maddox, violins; Ryan Mooney, viola; and Melita Hunsinger, cello.
“It’s just a mini-suite and grouping of movements, dances from thelate 1600s,” Bailey explains. “It’s a transcription, so it’s not really written for the cello, but until that period the cello was never a featured instrument; that kind of showcased what the cello was all about during that period - it’s very big, bass-y, ‘accompanimental’ instrument.”
He’ll follow up with the Suite No. 3 for solo cello in C major by J.S. Bach.
“To tie that in, right after this piece was written, my cello was born in 1693 [his Matteo Gofriller Cello formerly belonged to Mischa Schneider of the Budapest StringQuartet]. Bach was born in that same time period, 1685, so Bach was 8 when my cello was born.
“And then about 20 years later, Bach wrote [what] is essentially both the beginning and the end of what was the greatest music for cello solo - the Bach cello suites.”
After intermission, Bailey and Boehm will play the Schubert sonata. “Schubert was such a singing composer that I wanted to focus on the cello seen as most like the human voice,” Bailey says.
Some short pieces, including Variations on One String by Niccolo Paganini, will follow.
In sculpting the program, he says, “I always like to see and mix up familiar composers but yet unfamiliar pieces. The Dvorak Cello Concerto is familiar and beloved; the Couperin may be new to people. The ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata is Schubert, but they may not have heard [it] on the cello.The Bach is a standard; the short pieces I will be introducing to them.
“I wanted it to be quite different than the Dvorak evening. I wanted to show different kinds of music. I didn’t want to do all Romantic vehicles at that concert as well. I didn’t see this as an encapsulated recital; I saw it as part of this visit to Arkansas as a whole.
“I just assumed that if people came to the Dvorak and came to this recital, that they’d get everything they ever wanted.”
Bailey is the orchestra’s third Richard Sheppard Arnold Chamber Music Artist of Distinction, through a contribution by Kay Kelley Arnold in memory of her late husband, a distinguished federal judge and longtime supporter of the orchestra. Tickets are $28; student rush tickets are $6. Call (501) 666-1761.
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra 8 p.m. today, 3 p.m. Sunday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway. Zuill Bailey, cello. David Itkin conducts.
Dvorak: Cello Concerto in b minor, op.104; Ravel: Bolero; Stravinsky: Firebird Suite (1919 version).
Sponsor: American Airlines Tickets: $17-$58 plus service charges and facility fees; $6 student rush tickets available (501) 666-1761 www.arkansassymphony.org
This article was published Friday, September 19, 2008.
Weekend, Pages 73 on 09/19/2008
