Cape Symphony’s “A New Era” concert features an 11-year-old child prodigy on cello and “Star Wars” composer John Williams’ rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in an E Flat key that only specialized sopranos can easily sing.
This weekend’s concert, with performances at 4 p.m. Sept. 20 and 3 p.m. Sept. 21, also features guest conductor David Charles Abell. His career covers a wide range, from reconciling musical scores for composer Leonard Bernstein to leading BBC TV productions on the 10th and 25th anniversaries of “Les Miserables” in London’s West End.
Abell, who now lives in Provincetown, started his own far-reaching career singing as a 13-year-old in Bernstein’s 1971 tribute to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
“I was never a child prodigy,” Abell said, in a tone that suggests he couldn’t think of anything farther from the truth, “but my husband (Seann Alderking) was. We’ve talked about it many times.”
That perspective may be helpful when Abell leads Cape Symphony’s musicians in the season opener masterpiece concert, “A New Era.” Sofia Hernandez-Williams, 11, will perform “Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor” by Camille Saint-Saëns.
“She is extraordinary. The technical demands of Saint-Saëns’ romantic piece are extraordinary. I’m looking forward very much to meeting her,” Abell said.
A member of the Repertory Orchestra at Boston Youth Symphonies and principal cellist of the Joy of Music Youth Orchestra, Hernandez-Williams made her concert debut in 2024, performing Haydn’s “C Major Cello Concerto” with Worcester’s Seven Hills Symphony. She played the concerto again with the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra. In 2025, she performed the final movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C as a soloist in the Musical Superheroes concert of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra in Newton.
“She seems very professional already at the age of 11,” Abell said, adding that the most helpful thing he can do as a conductor is treat her as any other professional musician. “At any age, a musician wants to play their instrument well.”
Abell has worked with a broad range of artists, including Bryn Terfel, Diana Damrau, Judi Dench, Idina Menzel and Josh Groban. Abell is an internationally renowned conductor of classical music, opera, film and musical theater productions, both in Philadelphia near where he grew up and in London, where he lived and worked for 20 years.
Working with his mentor, Bernstein, Abell used his technical skills to ensure that compositions, such as Bernstein’s “Mass” and “Candide” remained true to the composer’s original work despite score changes copyists may have introduced during various productions.
“He was so good at setting words to music,” Abell said of Bernstein. “He did cross over all musical borders. I remember when his daughter Jamie brought him a piece of music from The Beatles that she was all excited about. He looked over it and explained to her why it worked so well.”
Of Bernstein, who died in 1990 at age 72, Abell said, “He did enough in his life for four lifetimes of an ordinary person.”
Abell seems to have picked up some of his mentor’s love for teaching. He paces through the Cape Symphony’s “A New Era” program, from Williams’ higher-pitched version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Johannes Brahms’ “Symphony No. 1 in C Minor.” Although Brahms finished composing the piece nearly 150 years ago, Abell describes the third movement, saying, “You can hear him walking in the woods” as if Brahms walked there yesterday.
Although Abell has worked with hundreds, or thousands, of pieces of music in his 40 years as a professional musician, he still speaks passionately of Brahms’ fourth movement, saying “You feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
Come to the concert, Abell urges, because “You’re not only seeing an 11-year-old cellist but hearing this great Brahms symphony which is so inspiring and beautiful.” Tickets are available through capesymphony.org/. Cape Symphony’s new music director and conductor Alyssa Wang will conduct her first official concerts Dec. 5-7.
Abell has a light side too: “I’m a conductor but when I was taking some time off, I told people I was a semi-conductor.”
Gwenn Friss is the editor of CapeWeek and covers entertainment, restaurants and the arts. Contact her at [email protected].
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