This is a continuation of our interview with Lucas Fels. In part 1, Mr. Fels discussed his own personal journey in getting started with new music. With that baseline, we now explore the challenges of contemporary music among the audiences of today, while also taking a look at some of the projects Mr. Fels is currently working on.
SV: You said earlier that you remember hearing contemporary music even as a child and finding some things difficult to listen to. Among the general public, new music suffers the stigma of being difficult to listen to or unpleasant. Are you concerned with changing this image and creating a larger audience for contemporary music?
LF: You know, that’s always difficult, what is more audience? I think in general there is an audience for contemporary music. And even if you get people who don’t know anything about contemporary music, if you get them into concerts and it’s well-played and exciting playing and exciting pieces, they love it. In the last six years being in the [Arditti Quartet], I’ve had so many experiences playing in some Italian small city or in Japan or in South America. People have no idea who these composers are you’re playing, and they’re really astonished and overwhelmed, and they love it. They really love it. So, I think it’s the image of contemporary music that it is difficult, but what is difficult? I mean, what is more difficult with a Ferneyhough quartet or Lachenmann quartet than with a late Beethoven quartet? It’s just a different language. People say, “Oh, I have to hear it more than once to understand.” I mean, I haven’t met anybody who can understand a Beethoven quartet when he hears it for the first time.
One example for me is three or four years ago, we premiered a Harrison Birtwistle quartet, “The Tree of Strings,” and I think we’ve played it now 40 times or so all over the world. In Japan, in America, in Australia, and Europe… really a lot. You see that in Brahms’ time, for example, or Schumann’s lifetime, their quartets were not played in these countries or not as much. They were played only 10 times or 15 times. But look at even something like a Lachenmann quartet— there are so many groups who play these pieces, and they play them all over the world all the time. So already, these pieces which are considered to be very difficult and not accessible for a normal audience are played all the time.
SV: Nowadays, you are constantly working with living composers. Does this affect the way you approach older pieces?
LF: I think in general, as soon as you explore your cello in a different way, you play other music differently. You think about other music in a different way. You play without vibrato or you even read music in a different way. In Brahms sonatas, for example, you do rubatos but you just do them because it’s habit or because you think it’s right. But already in a Webern quartet, you just do what’s written first. In a Ligeti quartet or a Lachenmann quartet, you don’t do a rubato if it’s not written. Why? I mean, why should you, you know? You don’t say, “Oh, because it’s musical.” I think you start thinking in a different way. The production of sound certainly changes because you think, “Oh, so why do I do vibrato? Why should I do vibrato?” or with the bow you certainly have more variety. Of course, you wouldn’t play a Beethoven Sonata sul ponticello, but you start using different colors, I think.
SV: Do you believe there are some core works from the second half of the 20th century that should now become part of the standard cello repertoire?
LF: Yeah, I think there is. I think the Dallapiccola piece [Ciaccona, Intermezzo e Adagio] is a great piece and it’s very interesting because it’s one of these pieces which is not really cellistic in the sense that it’s comfortable, but it’s a great piece. Definitely Xenakis’ “Kottos,” definitely the Zimmerman Sonata. Lachenmann “Pression” is a fantastic piece because he really learned to explore the instrument in a completely different way. It’s incredibly precise, and if you do exactly what’s written, then it really works. What else is there? There are classics like the Carter Sonata. There is Roger Sessions, “Six Pieces.” Great pieces for cellists. Marvelous pieces.
Oh, there’s a lot: Lutosławski Cello Concerto, Dutilleux. There are the 12 pieces for Sacher. There is a core repertoire of course, but you know, cello has never been a really major genre, for composers. It’s not like orchestra or string quartet. There are lots that are good pieces—the Berio “Sequenza” is a good piece. You can learn a lot from that. And the Ligeti Sonata is a nice piece, but you can’t compare it to his Second Quartet. The string quartet has all these really great major pieces from lots of composers in the second half of the 20th century, so I would say, do chamber music!
SV: You mentioned Helmut Lachenmann’s solo cello work “Pression.” This is a piece you know very well and spoke about at the 2010 Darmstadt Summer Course. Can you describe your experience with this piece?
LF: In the notation of the piece there are quite a few, I won’t say mistakes, but misunderstandings. He really found a totally new way of writing these kinds of actions on the cello, and so there are some things that are not clear. In the last two years, we created together a new version of the piece. It’s not out yet but it will be in the next months. That was a very, very interesting process to really discuss everything again with him, how it should be, how he wants it and how he would want it to be written today for cellists to understand it without asking the composer. Because, in the end, it has to be written in a way that you understand it without the composer.
SV: This kind of cooperation with composers is something you bring into your own teaching. Can you speak about the project you did with the cello studio at Darmstadt in 2010?
LF: The thing is, I’ve been teaching at Darmstadt for many years, and it is always that either the cellists come with pieces they have learned before and are very well-prepared, or young composers came with some pieces, and they need a cellist to learn a piece very quickly. And my idea, or Hans [Thomalla]’s and my idea, was to make a different project, and so we asked all the young composers four, five months before it started to send in cello pieces. We chose 12 of these, but I didn’t tell the cellists. They had no idea about this project.
On the first day, I just put the music on the piano and said every cellist should learn one of these pieces in the next two weeks together with us and together with the young composers. And the idea was, first of all, for us cellists to learn the piece quickly. Second was to really have an opportunity to discuss the piece, not in a sense that something is written and I try to play it; in a sense that if you want this it should be written like this, or “I think it will be better like this.” Otherwise, you never have time for that.
This kind of workshop has many different sides. Every second day we had lectures or workshops together with Hans and me, and sometimes musicologists, discussing the pieces, how they are written, why are they written like this, from what tradition they come, what is the aesthetic meaning of it. And, for the cellist, if you want this, you have to write it like this; this works on the cello and this doesn’t. It was very interesting.
SV: That sounds like a great project. You are here in Chicago working on another project for next year’s Darmstadt Summer Course. Can you explain this project you are doing with Ensemble Dal Niente?
LF: So this project we did now with Dal Niente is a similar project, but we said if we do it with an ensemble we need some preparation before. So, again, we had some sort of competition: I think it was 80 composers or so wrote or sent in existing pieces. We chose six of these, and they wrote sketches for the ensemble. In Darmstadt, we have again 10 days working together on these pieces, really on a sort of basic level. Everybody knows what he does, but is open and willing to change things, in the sense the composer can change things and we, as musicians, can go in different directions or show them things they don’t know.
SV: You are constantly playing and seeing new scores, including the six for this project. How do you approach a new score when you first receive it, as a performer and as a coach?
LF: First, you just see what can you see in it, what is written in it rhythmically; if it’s written in a silly way or if it’s convincing. First of all, you mark your pieces. That’s the first thing. You write in what the others do and you really read through what the piece’s problems are, what is hidden, and what is happening. And then if you have questions you immediately say, “Okay, question mark, question mark, question mark,” and you ask the composer if he has an answer, or you make suggestions to the composer about what it could be.
In part 3, Lucas Fels wraps up our interview series with some of his own personal challenges working in contemporary music, as well as advice for future professional musicians interested in new music.
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