The poetry of the architectural lines of the Bahai Temple and the deep reverberating sounds of the cello – it is said you go where the music is. To lose oneself in the synergy of the French cellist Sonia Wieder Atherton with the winter chill was the stuff of multiple odysseys.
“Music must be where the heart of the world beats,” says French cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Here in India she has met and recorded varied strains of different kinds of classical music, voices, rhythms to create counterpoints in classical fusion to match European andantes and adagios and allegros.
Prayers and a lullaby
Wieder-Atherton matched these qualities in her commanding performances of four original compositions she had adapted from an ancient and Egyptian prayer and a Corsican lullaby. Replete with sound recordings of deeply resonant Indian classical swaras in the lower mezzo and base notes, this was an odyssey that shifted from sombre moody meanderings to impulsive bursts and enigmatic passages of spiritual sounds. Pauses and melancholic movements were hewn loosely to traditional forms but it was the canticle that extolled in evocations of expression.
Pathos and angst filled piety rode into the notes of Spanish pianist and composer Enrique Granados’ waves. The eternal elegy brought back memories of his death, when he plunged into the waves of the sea to save his wife and both drowned. Wieder-Atherton’s rendition of Prokokief’s extracts from symphony concert opus 125 introduced us to the brilliance of the Russian giant of the 20th Century.
This series of extracts struck a chord of reminiscence – of dark Russian folk melodies and nuances. Wieder-Atherton’s full-bodied cello sound filled the spaces with a studied restraint and verve.
Classical chic
By the time she came to Bellini and Bach she left us in awe of the power of her performance, the authority unquestionable . Here the rhythms were intoned with a fluidity that was flexible as she led us through the work's changing moods, sometimes sanguine to a skittish or dizzying dalliance.
Her performance of Bach's solo cello suites proved the point. It brought back memories of the crisp articulations and vibrato-free zones of period instrument movement. What enticed, were the quick silver dance rhythms which threaded their way through the piece sometimes sounding sonorous and sometimes sprightly.
During some stretches of of the quiet passages it was as if music and poetry overlapped. But the greatness of the 60 minute recital came through with special solitude when Wieder-Atherton played alone and we became silent travellers transported through the islands of time.
The cellist is an ardent traveller, and Wieder-Atherton feeds her programmes with her wanderings thereby making a quaint odyssey filled with rustic ruminations and elements.
In control and finesse, Wieder-Atherton pulled off the fusion passages with panache. For this intrepid traveller, history is part of her secret. Reflecting over the dulcet arrangements of Indian and Western modes, it was clear that she plays to substantiate, a new world of classical chic in which we must feel the power of living traditions that hark back to the heart of Romanticism and mellifluous music. This French cellist’s playing and her supplication to gathering multiple strains in her compositional arrangements gains much of its authority from this sense of a tradition. It is clear that that in her entrails she picks and collects so that she illustrates an expression that is truly free.
From Granados to Bach to Prokofiev, through adaptations and rubrics of traditional melodies, she captured her quest for roots or identity of the composers who have fascinated her journey in learning.
Sound recordings
It is the sound recordings that wove into the classical passages and compositions that celebrated the cellist’s musical journey. We were led into babbling bays and triumphant tributaries of rare Russian and German repertoire that is not separated from life or from sounds or from the world around us.
In 2005, when Zubin Mehta conducted a concert with the maestro Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich as soloist in Delhi, Rostropovich said: “ Music must have a balance of soul, a balance for human beauty. That means art has an important role. And music does not need an interpreter; music doesn't need a translator. This is just one planet, like one family.” Cellist Sonia Wieder Atherton’s concert testified this beyond measure.
( The concert was presented by Alliance Française de Delhi, in association with the Embassy of France in India as part of the Bonjour India festival )