If you are seeking Pieter Wispelwey's
website and figure that www.wispelwey.nl will do the trick, you'll find yourself
looking at a gorgeous photo of a bright red Italian motorcycle instead of
the young Dutch cellist. No matter. Serendipitously for a musician whose
vision is wide and whose curiosity is unbounded, the caption under the sleek
Ducati 998 racer-"The difference between theory and practice is that in theory
there is no difference"-fits the man as perfectly as it does the machine.
With the help of a commanding technique, a ravenous intelligence, and interpretive
principles that cherish inspiration, Wispelwey has blazed a unique musical
trail into the new century.
This has been a breakthrough
year for Wispelwey on the American scene. After hearing performances
of Bach and Britten at Lincoln Center in April, Alex Ross wrote in The
New Yorker that "Wispelwey brought out in Britten the same intimate
power that he found in Bach . . . . His recording of the Britten suites
edges out all rivals. I'd also recommend his recording of the Bach suites
over most available alternatives. Casals and Pierre Fournier may reach
more rarified heights; Wispelwey catches Bach at his most vital and
human."
Appropriately for a young virtuoso
riding the crest of success, Wispelwey worked a grueling 2002-2003 schedule
that included a tour of Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore playing the Schumann
concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.
He was slated to conclude the season during the summer by playing two performances
of Schubert's two-cello quintet with the Emerson Quartet. In between he played
the Elgar, Walton, and Dutilleux concertos, and found time for a South American
foray with pianist Dejan Lazic, with whom he released a new recording of
sonatas for cello and piano by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Britten (Channel
Classics, 20098).
I caught up with Wispelwey in
May while he was in the midst of three performances of the Dvorak concerto
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. This immensely
important step in his career-it was his first appearance with a major American
orchestra-came about when scheduled cellist Truls Mork broke his leg. (It
was the second time Wispelwey had replaced his Norwegian colleague; six weeks
earlier, it had been the Shostakovich in Rotterdam.) It also made sense,
Wispelwey thought, because he had already been scheduled to play in Los Angeles
next March during the inaugural season of Frank Gehry's spectacular new Walt
Disney Concert Hall. The Bach suites, naturally!
Listening to Wispelwey's concerto
recordings for Channel Classics had left me unprepared for how commanding
he is on stage with his marvelous physique and regal stature. Foregoing a
jacket and sporting a handsome pair of suspenders, Wispelwey strode onto
the stage with his "regular anonymous French Vuillaume-school cello," shook
hands energetically with the concertmaster and conductor, settled into his
chair, and stuck his endpin into the floor with great aplomb.
Once the music started, his
phrasing was direct, his movements certain. He achieved rhetorical effects
more with color changes and timbral bursts than with portamento or tempo
shifts. Although he could obviously do anything he wanted, the performance
was not about technique; it was about communicating with Salonen and the
musicians and, above all, with the audience. If initially it seemed that
this would be a thinking man's Dvorak, it turned out to be far more visceral,
tapping into Dvorak's pulse and illuminating Dvorak's canvas with shafts
of pure light and surges of energy.
A
Personal Statement
Up close, Wispelwey has a pleasing,
wide face with hypnotic blue eyes, just this side of movie-star looks. Even
when discussing the most serious aspects of his art, his mouth suddenly wrinkles
into a boyish, disarming grin. He enjoys the interview process and is obviously
willing to take on any questions. When I mention John Keats' comment that
none of his poems ever approached the intensity of its original inspiration,
Wispelwey says, "Yes, I understand that. In fact, the role of the interpreter
is to bring back that original, heightened intensity."
Obviously, this is based on
a strong sense of what the music is about. "Many parts of the [Dvorak] Cello
Concerto have elements of operatic scenes," Wispelwey says, "changing the
stage, introducing the characters, with new characters emerging from the
orchestra and big mood changes when you change the lighting."
Asked how he knows what the
music "should sound like," Wispelwey responds that he spent time "reading
the score with imagination fed by knowing how the instruments at the time
would have sounded, with an awareness of how it would have sounded to Dvorak,
and how it would have sounded during the first decade of performances.
"There are things in the
score that are plain and simple," he notes, "like the opening of the
second movement where the cello comes in piano dolce out of
a horn chord. Or the opening of the third movement, where the cello
comes in mezzo forte risoluto-not fortissimo- but
understated, firm."
He talks about the famous "French
horn" theme in the first movement, so often played by cellists with no holds
barred. "In the score," Wispelwey explains, "it says pianissimo for the cello,
which means to me that the moment must be quietly exquisite, so intimate
that it pulls the audience into a dynamic black hole, allowing the soloist
to make a deeply personal statement.
"To me," he adds, "that's just
playing what's in the score."
Onstage, Wispelwey's practice
is as good as his theory and an audible hush falls over the audience when
he plays that beautiful melody with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
A
Singing Voice
Wispelwey, 41, grew up in
the seaside town of Haarlem. He studied with Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma
in Amsterdam, with Paul Katz in the United States, and William Pleeth
in the United Kingdom. In 1990, his first recording with Channel Classics,
of Bach's Six Suites, won considerable acclaim. "Pieter Wispelwey's
Bach is pithy and argumentative, and on several occasions I found myself
reaching for my urtext with some incredulity," a Gramophone
reviewer opined at the time. In 1992 Wispelwey became the first cellist
to receive the prestigious Netherlands Music Prize for young Dutch musicians,
for playing a repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary with distinction
and flair.
It's clear that the Netherlands
provided Wispelwey with invaluable cultural nurturing. Although his first
teacher, Dicky Boeke, is now 80 years old, she still coaches him on occasion.
"She has tremendous taste," Wispelwey says, "and a wide field of interest.
She doesn't tell me technical things so much anymore, but her musical remarks
are completely logical, with a southern feel for communication, temperament,
and theater. She is Dutch, but in a very southern way," he admits as that
grin flashes, adding, "even in Holland there is north and south: The north
is Calvinist, the south is Catholic."
When Wispelwey was a teenager,
Boeke introduced him to Lieder, particularly through the art of Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, plus "lots of Bruckner symphonies, Schubert, Wagner, Debussy,
Ravel, Stravinsky, ballet-and art in general."
Along the way, Wispelwey made
a habit of listening to as many recordings as possible.
Although Boeke's interest extended
to new music as well, when Wispelwey was growing up in Amsterdam, it was
not new music that was considered radical. "Funny thing," he says. "The excitement
in the '70s was focused on new interpretations of Baroque, Classical, Romantic
and, of course, Renaissance music." Again, theory and practice merged in
Wispelwey's life.
"I got everything firsthand,"
says Wispelwey, mentioning Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt,
who all performed regularly in Amsterdam at that time. He also singles out
countertenor Alfred Deller as "unforgettable, singing love songs on a chair
with his lute player next to him. It was very intimate and pure, and yet
very, very emotional."
Wispelwey describes the five
or six members of the Deller Consort "sitting at a long table in front of
the audience, as if at an evening meal. Beautiful, magical."
It's also clear where his musical
ability came from.
His father was an amateur violinist,
"completely passionate. He definitely should have gone into music," Wispelwey
says. "And he would have been good enough to have become a professional.
No doubt." His father has also provided a valuable sounding board. "Over
the last five years, I think he's enjoyed my concerts even more unconditionally.
Before that, although he was very supportive, he was also very critical.
In a positive way, of course," Wispelwey laughs. "He wanted to discuss my
interpretive choices, because sometimes he didn't understand them."
Cello
and Changes
When I bring up the subject
of his technique, Wispelwey admits that he hasn't really thought about it
for the last ten years. "Maybe it sounds silly," he says, "maybe arrogant.
But as a student I practiced an enormous amount, eight hours a day, out of
an urge to master the instrument as quickly as possible. I went through all
the etudes in the first year and performed them from memory at the classes-not
just one but ten in a row. I must have been a horrible student," he says
with a smile.
His obsession with technique
lasted only a short while, however, two years perhaps, although he agrees
that understanding cello technique sheds light on how music is interpreted.
"Casals, of course, is a fascinating object for study because he's a link
to the 19th century where we still don't have a clue how music was played.
For example, do we really have an idea of how Brahms' Violin Concerto sounded
in the first decade of its existence?" Wispelwey answers his own question,
"I don't think we do. And if we think of late-19th- century singing, how
much different it is from postwar singing. Even the Vienna Philharmonic,
which claims to have a direct link to previous generations of orchestras
going back to Brahms, Schubert, and Beethoven, are now playing with steel
strings.
"There is no link anymore, although
I still think [the way in which cello technique changes over the years] is
a fascinating object to study."
Wispelwey first heard the Bach
suites performed live by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's longtime principal
cellist Tibor de Machula. Soon after, he heard Bylsma playing the Bach suites
in Amsterdam. Asked whether it made sense to speak of an evolution in the
interpretation of Bach suites over the years, he answers that such a concept
would be "misleading, because if taken to its logical conclusion it would
signal the end of interpretation in 50 years or so. Of course, one cannot
deny the fruits of the early-music movement-and not only for early music.
The interpretation of Mozart and Beethoven has gained so much from the early-music
revolution."
These days, Wispelwey still
has a lot on his plate.
He will make his second
appearance with a major American orchestra next February playing CPE
Bach's A Major concerto with the Boston Symphony conducted by Ton Koopman.
He's scheduled to record the Beethoven sonatas again, this time with
Lazic on 19th-century instruments. (Characteristically for a musician
who disdains the conventional, he will add transcriptions of the Kreutzer
and Spring violin sonatas.) In October, he will record Sofia Gubaidulina's
The Seven Last Words with the Collegium Vocale Gent.
Before leaving Los Angeles for
recitals and concerts in Malm, Leon, and Madrid, Wispelwey found time to
stop in at the 20th Century Fox studios to record a Bach prelude for a new
movie by Australian director Peter Weir, seemingly an entirely logical thing
to do for a musician who has such a grasp of the large musical picture and
who seems never to have produced anything routine-a musician for whom, in
practice, there is no difference between practice and theory. Oh yes. If
you'd rather check out Pieter Wispelwey's website than that of an Italian
motorcycle dealer, simply click on www.pieterwispelwey.com.
