In general, she continues, the Boccherini quintets combine beautiful sonorities with stimulating technical challenges. The composer himself was one of the leading cellists of his era, and made full use of his considerable abilities. As Mahler notes, “He developed playing in a high register because he grew up with a father who played the double bass, and they were concertizing from a fairly young age, for Boccherini. And I think because of the double bass he just decided that therefore the cello would be better off in a higher register, and he started writing all this pretty high repertoire. He even developed a specific way of writing things down, so that you would know where you’d want to play it. He used the [left] thumb as a capo, and if he wanted you to, let’s say, put your thumb on an A and a D on the higher strings, he would write it in the violin clef. So you would always know where he would like you to shift to a different position, and play that whole passage in that position.”
Extended techniques, alternative notation systems: one could almost argue that Boccherini had a surprisingly modern sensibility, at least in his quest to extend the possibilities of his instrument. Ironically, however, Mahler argues that one of the reasons his music has been overlooked is that it does not sit well on modern instruments. “He has this gentle, warm, suave character in his writing, and that doesn’t work very well when you start playing on steel strings and you start playing with a much more sustained bow stroke,” she explains. “When you change these elements of the instrument, the music doesn’t speak anymore. It doesn’t come to life.”
The cellist has the perfect solution for this conundrum, however. With the Mimosa String Quintet, she’ll be playing with gut strings and her primary instrument: an 18th-century José Contreras cello made in Madrid. Although there’s no record of it ever passing through Boccherini’s hands during his 37-year tenure in Spain, it’s an ideal fit for his music. And when the Mimosa players switch over to the aforementioned Schubert quintet, Mahler’s second-best cello will come into play: she’s loaning her 19th-century French instrument to Japan-born, Sweden-based Mimé Yamahiro. The two will also switch roles, with Yamahiro handling first-cello duties for the Schubert. Sisters Christi and Chloe Meyers will also move between first and second violin during the intermission; violist Mieka Michaux rounds out the quintet.
It’s an apt approach for a program in which, as Mahler allows, the two featured works don’t have much in common apart from their instrumentation.
“The way I see it, Boccherini was from the Mediterranean. He grew up in Italy and he lived in Spain as an adult man, and that is such a different influence and climate,” she says. “Schubert was Austrian and spoke German; what a big difference right there! And it’s two generations later, we shouldn’t forget, because they were about 50 years apart, 54 years apart. So those elements by themselves make for quite a big difference. Schubert’s piece is profound and very much loved as chamber music of the 19th century, but in fact as music they don’t have very much in common, I find.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.createastir.ca ’
