On Wednesday evening, a lucky audience of boys, parents, staff and visitors were treated to a spectacular concert by the Open Strings Cello Ensemble. An atmospherically lit Music School Recital Hall was transformed – 10 performers (one violinist and nine cellists) seated in a circle with their conductor, Bjorn Bantock (Head of Strings), surrounded by flickering tealights, the audience forming a larger circle around them.
Mr Bantock introduced the ensemble, a group of supremely talented young musicians, all students (recent past, present and future) of the Royal College of Music, together with their Director, Cello Professor at the Royal College and renowned international soloist, Jakob Kullberg. The concert programme featured a selection of pieces from the major concerto literature, all arranged for cello ensemble.
First came the first two movements of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1, the fiery and frenetic Allegretto, followed by the contrastingly serene Moderato. Jakob Kullberg played the stunning solo cello part and the ensemble of cellists, with one violinist, played the part of the symphony orchestra between them.
There followed a selection of romantic cello favourites, and in each a different member of the ensemble took the solo part. These included Glazunov’s Chant Du Menestrel, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and more by Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.
The mood changed again after this with a selection of melancholy short pieces, the minor keys evocative of klezmer music, all composed by Ernest Bloch, the Jewish Swiss-born turn of the century composer, namely Prayer, Supplication and Jewish Song. Each emotionally charged ‘prayer’ allowed a different player their chance to demonstrate their virtuosic prowess.
The finale was nothing short of spectacular. With Jakob Kullberg taking on the fiendishly difficult solo parts, the ensemble played four pieces of entirely new music. The composer was introduced – he had been sitting in the audience – as Niels Rønsholdt, a contemporary Danish composer who is working with the ensemble to create a new cello ensemble concerto, which they will eventually record. The four ‘Tests’ or ‘Abstracts’, he went on to say, may or may not make the final cut of this concerto, so either way, they were being performed for the very first time, or the only time! What followed was mesmerising. Rønsholdt uses entirely new compositional techniques, and the melodies were looped, time-stretched, and wildly fluctuating, all of which evoked a dream-like, sometimes nightmarish, “mirrored cabinet”, as the composer described it. The audience definitely came away, once the applause had died down, with much to talk about, and indeed to reflect on later.
You can read more about Head of Strings, Bjorn Bantock here.
You can read more about cellist Jakob Kullberg here.
You can read more about composer Niels Rønsholdt here.