New Classical Tracks: Johannes Moser: Dvorak & Lalo Cello Concertos

Johannes Moser: Dvořák and Lalo Cello Concertos (Pentatone)

Johannes Moser has always been surrounded by music. His mother is a world-class opera singer who now teaches at the Juilliard School of Music. His father is a cellist. He's the one who introduced his son to his first love. "And instantly, I remember this very clearly, when I was 8 years old and sitting down with this instrument and feeling the low frequencies that this instrument has," Johannes says, "I instantly fell in love."

Since winning the top prize at the 2002 Tchaikovsky Competition, this charming, young German/Canadian cellist has focused on contemporary works. His new collaboration with Pentatone Music leads him back to the main cello repertoire. His first in a series of five planned recordings pairs Antonín Dvořák with Edouard Lalo.

"So the Dvořák concerto of course is one of the cornerstones of the cello repertoire, and so I waited a long time to record this piece," Johannes says. "I recorded I think about 15 discs before I felt actually ready to tackle this masterpiece.

"I was looking for a pairing with another piece and I thought what is essential to the Dvořák concerto? When he wrote this piece, he was in America. He was there for two years to create something that was called the American Music School, and he had an incredible longing for home. And at the same time, he also heard that the woman he loved when he was a young man was dying. This is a moment of personal and general longing for him. And so I looked through the repertoire and I found that Lalo, who was a Frenchman — he had a longing as well — a musical longing for the music of Spain. You find that, of course, in his most famous piece, the Symphonie Espagnole for orchestra and violin. But the cello concerto has a lot of Spanish elements as well."

There are plenty of amazing recordings of the Dvořák Cello Concerto, so you might be wondering what makes this recording unique? Johannes says the first thing was to isolate himself; he hasn't listened to another recording of this work in over two years. "And so I thought, I want to go bare bones," he explains. "I want to strip myself of all the recording history, of all the performance practice that comes with such a piece, and I want to go back to the roots of the piece. So I got my hands on the manuscript of the concerto and I started analyzing his handwriting and just, you know, flipping through the manuscript I found, that this concerto did not come easily to Dvořák. He was changing passages constantly. He was scribbling notes into the manuscript, he was making amendments — he changed the whole ending once he heard that his long lost love had actually died. So this is a work very much in progress, and it's a work that's very human because of it. It's not like this almost god-like phenomenon of Mozart where he just opens his channels and everything just flows on paper. No, Dvořák was very much a craftsman, and he developed the piece slowly. Looking through that development made this piece very human for me."

This well-seasoned concerto is not just a casual acquaintance for Johannes Moser. It's a work he's lived with his entire life. "So the reasons why I feel we are good friends is that it has fantastic playability," he says. "It's really written for the instrument — unlike, for example, the Schumann concerto, which is very difficult to tackle because Schumann just wrote a piano part for the cello, so to speak. But Dvořák, being a string player himself … he knew the instrument very well. And what I love about this piece so much is the combination of virtuosity and always the return to amazing melody, to amazing themes to just such heartfelt, warm sound that he was able to create. And you know what is incredible about this piece is that it's changing constantly its format.

"Of course it starts as a big concerto, but then you have a lot of chamber music moments. For example, with the first violin and with the oboe and with the flute. So you have a lot of interaction with the orchestra. Something, for example, that you don't have with the Lalo concerto. The Lalo concerto is a real concerto in the sense that there is a backing band and then there is a rock star in the front. The Dvořák is much more integrating the cello into the orchestra, which is why many people have called it 'Dvořák's tenth Symphony'."

Johannes Moser said he had another reason for including the Lalo Cello Concerto on this recording. Because this work is often one of the first pieces a young cellist will learn to play, it's not earned the respect it deserves. "And I was a little bit on a mission to give this piece back the true right that it has in the repertoire," Johannes says. "I feel that, again, he understands string instruments incredibly well, being a violin player himself. He understands drama, he understands drive, and he understands Spanish flair. So I think he created an incredibly appealing piece of music. And because it's not often in the most skilled hands then it doesn't get its best performances. So I'm very happy that it's on this disc with the Dvořák concerto, with a piece that is very, very dear to me."

As a teacher, Johannes is often guiding his own students through these two concertos, which deepens his experience with these works. "If I hear somebody who has just started playing the Dvořák or Lalo concertos," he says, "then I really get a perspective with fresh ears and fresh eyes. And then I try to stay away from imposing my own interpretation at first, and just try to point out things in form, point out things on the page and try to basically bring out the voice of the student and make that heard. I think that's my mission as a teacher, almost like an archeologist, to take away all the gravel and bring out the masterwork that is already buried underground."

Whether he's teaching these two concertos or performing them, cellist Johannes Moser knows just how to polish these two jewels.

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