“My home is where my cello is”

This musician frequently goes on tours to many European countries, performs with such influential symphonic ensembles as the national orchestras of France and Belgium, philharmonic orchestras of Lisbon, Liege, Israel, Luxembourg, and Hanover. Sonia Wieder-Atherton has cooperated with famous conductors: Louis Langree, Marc Minkowski, Lawrence Foster, Janos Fuerst, Alain Altinoglu, Pascal Rophe, Matthias Pintscher, Guenter Neuhold, Herve Niquet, et al. Her duets with noted pianists, such as Imogen Cooper, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Laurent Cabasso, Bruno Fontaine, violinists Raphael Oleg, Jan Talich Jr., Silvia Marcovici, percussionist Francoise Rivalland always evoke increased interest among the admirers of chamber music.

The attention to her performer’s image paid by outstanding contemporary composers, such as Henri Dutilleux, Pascal Dusapin, Wolfgang Rihm, Betsy Jolas, Maurice Ohana, who dedicated their works to the cellist, is noteworthy as well. An author of original artistic projects, including Chants d’Est, Au commencement Monteverdi, etc., she always intrigues the audience with the original conceptuality of her ideas. It is not accidental that in 1999 French Academy of Fine Arts awarded Sonia Wieder-Atherton with Grand Prix del Duca to acknowledge her bright talent, and in 2011 she won the Prize of the Bernheim Foundation, which once in three years chooses winners among litterateurs, artists, and scientists. Besides, in 1997 the soloist signed an exclusive contract with RCA Red Sea/BMG France.

Ukraine has recently become a welcoming home for Sonia Wieder-Atherton, who performed the works of Italian composer of the 17th century, Matteo Goffriller. Together with a brilliant pianist, conductor, composer, and arranger Bruno Fontaine the soloist presented in Dnipropetrovsk, and then in Kyiv, a program which is totally unusual for Ukrainian audience.

In the first part of the program they performed a cycle of eight Jewish liturgical songs, originally arranged by the artist and Jean-Francois Zygel. The unique Parisian duo again convinced the audience that music of any origin is a universal language of the humanity, accessible, close, and clear to everyone. The audience heard the generalized image of the Jewish people with its typical devotion to religious, philosophical, sometimes hard, contemplations, which at times reach the acuteness of despair and drama, and at the same time – its ability to easily move to humor, modest pleasures, passionate dancing rhythms of mass celebrations, etc.

Deep, full of passion, velvety sound of cello solo captivated the audience starting with the first melody, “Priere” (Prayer). Cello’s monologue sounded like a passionate intimate confession of a loner: the instrument was crying, singing, begging, asking, calling, doubting, agreeing, and reconciling. The slowly fading vibration of cello’s melodious phrases made everyone present listen spellbound to the chesty voice of the instrument, whose sounds hung over and then slowly dissolved in the acoustic space of the hall.

“Cello’s thick timber is the best for conveying waiting and painful eagerness. There is no power in the world which could speed up the movement of honey running from an inclined glass. The cello slows down the sound, as if it is not in a hurry. Ask Brahms – he knows this. Ask Dante – he heard it.” This expression by Osip Mandelstam mystically resounded in the piercing emotional tone of unmatched performance of “Prayer” by Sonia Wieder-Atherton. And although the following performances of the cycle, “Psaume” (Psalm), “Nigun,” “Kaddish,” “Danse” (Dance) consistently brought contrast psychological conditions into the flow of music and then sharp, rhythmic fragments drew the audience into the unrestrained passionate dance, namely the episodes, when the cello monologue imitated the sound of a human voice, full of intonation of burning passion and languor, whereas the curvy oriental melody evoked in one’s imagination the picture of a sunburned land amidst a hot southern night, caused the highest emotional feedback of the audience. Maybe there was some mystical connection between the master of the unique instrument and the music she interpreted in such a virtuoso manner.

“You know, I have always been attracted to strong personalities. For me such personalities were Anna Akhmatova and Dmitry Shostakovich, the artists who lived in a difficult Stalin’s time of total fear and at the same time had courage to appeal to their people, i.e., to whole humankind, with a message of a huge spiritual power of resisting the existing regime.”

Both concerts, in Kyiv and in Dnipropetrovsk, were organized by France’s Embassy to Ukraine and the French Institute. At the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine musicians were playing together with a talented young Ukrainian Varvara Vasylieva, a little violinist, who has recently performed in Paris.

After the Kyiv performance The Day used the opportunity to peep behind the scenes and learn professional performing secrets of the outstanding cellist and talked to Sonia Wieder-Atherton tete-a-tete.

ROSTROPOVICH’S LESSONS ARE A PRICELESS SCHOOL

 Sonia, how did you “get along” with the cello and why namely this musical instrument became the “soul of your soul,” to use Marina Tsvetaeva’s phrase?

“It happened when I was young. My friends and I were throwing stones one day and when there was a sum of figures, we pushed a key on a juke-box and listened to various melodies. I pushed the key by accident and we heard the sounds of famous Cello Sonata by Antonio Vivaldi. The world around me suddenly stopped to exist, as I was hypnotized by the cantabile timber of the cello. It was the time I understood it was my instrument. Before that I had played the piano, but I was attracted to string instruments, so I tried to play the guitar. However, I have always wanted the sound of the strings to be more plangent, song-like, and more continuous. The cello totally met my desires. However, sometimes it seems to me it was not me who chose the cello, but namely the instrument found me.”

 Your artistic biography contradicts the traditional scheme of development of a professional musician. You were not born in a family of musicians. So, was your music career your personal achievement?

“My mom taught philosophy in Paris, and my father is an American scholar. I was born in San Francisco, but when I was eight, my family moved to France. Since my early childhood I have been influenced by different cultures, I lent a careful ear to intonations of different languages, and my world of sounds was formed by different sound environments.”

 Your performing style was hugely influenced by the Russian cello school; in particular, famous Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich became the key personality in your professional career. When did you meet this true world citizen and on whose initiative?

“Back in the time of my studies in the Paris Conservatoire (Maurice Gendron’s class) I listened to string instrument performances of many East European musicians and soloists which were outstanding due to a special sound of cello. It was extremely cantabile, especially songlike, deep, warm, emotionally plethoric and rich. Sometimes it seemed to me that their sound had a physical weight. I intuitively felt some mystery in this unique style, so I decided to solve it at any cost. So I started taking Mstislav Rostropovich’s classes, which became a priceless school of improvement and performing mastery for me.

“Soon I continued to polish this method of sound producing from cello in Moscow Conservatoire (in the class of Rostropovich’s student Natalia Shakhovskaya). The classes with her, which lasted for two years, produced simply a hypnotic impression. And results of this creative communication were not slow to arrive: in 1986 I became a winner of the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris. I got convinced that Russian cantabile manner of performance enabled me to reveal all subtleties of the composer’s idea in a really sincere and emotional way.”

“I FELT AN INNER NEED TO VOICE THE SACRAL CONTENT OF THE MELODIES BY PLAYING THEM ON CELLO”

So, it was not accidental that you debuted with a solo album Chants D’Est (Songs from Slavic Lands). Please, tell us how did you come with the idea of creating a program made of Jewish songs, and what made you come back to this layer of religious Jewish music, which scarcely known for the audience?

“It happened during my cooperation with Belgian film director Chantal Akerman, who worked on the film Histoires d’Amerique, which was dedicated to the life of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the US. She offered me to compose a soundtrack to the film and I got really absorbed by this project: I started to seriously study the ancient Jewish liturgical music, which accompanied the Jewish people in its many-year wandering. I was looking for the material in Paris and Jerusalem libraries, and after all stopped on Hasidic melodies. Namely there purely religious devotion organically combines with secular, joyful perception of the world, and even the dancing rhythms do not run counter to the spiritual content of the melodies. Those were moments of real happiness for me: to listen to singing of different cantors, compare the versions of their word-of-mouth improvisation. This painstaking research work turned out to be so close and clear for me that it seemed to me those songs had lived in me for centuries, before I was born. You know, I had an extremely strong, wonderful feeling, a kind of audio deja vu. After this I came up with a desire to plunge deeper into the Talmud, so that I could understand better the connection between the words, the thoughts, and the feelings, which in my opinion do not exist in the sacral book of Jews without one another.”

 Could it be the voice of your genetic memory? (Sonia Wieder-Atherton’s mother is of Jewish origin, she comes from Romania.)

“No, it’s not that. Simply the extremely powerful emotional charge of these spiritual songs was born on the vertex of merge of the word and live vocal-recitative intoning, and I felt an inner need to voice the sacral content of the melodies by performing them on cello, which is maximally close to the human voice. And I was right: this music leaves nobody indifferent.”

 What was your next step in your search for new concert projects?

“You know, I have always been attracted to strong personalities. For me such personalities were Anna Akhmatova and Dmitry Shostakovich, the artists who lived in a difficult Stalin’s time of total fear and at the same time had courage to appeal to their people, i.e., to whole humankind, with a message of a huge spiritual power of resisting the existing regime. In particular, the second part of the concert included three preludes, Op. 34, Nos. 8, 10, 17, and Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40 by Shostakovich.”

 Is this concert your first visit to Ukraine? Do you know the music of Ukrainian composers, in particular, their works for the cello?

“Unfortunately, not. Yet. But this is only the beginning of my, hopefully, long-time acquaintance with your country. I know that Ukrainian music culture has many-century traditions and is extremely bright and variegated. Therefore I promise, on my next tour to Ukraine I will perform a work by some Ukrainian author for sure.”