Interview, Natalie Clein on Bloch, Ligeti & Dallapiccola

Cellist Natalie Clein explores some lesser-known corners of the repertoire for solo cello in her new album, released at the end of January - Ernst Bloch's three suites, Dallapiccola's Ciaccona, Intermezzo e Adagio and Ligeti's Sonata.

The period when these works were written was a turbulent one, with the Second World War and all its horrors still very fresh in the world's memory. This dark past is just one of many elements that seem to feed into these five complex pieces; I spoke to Natalie last week about their origins and how they came to be.

Photo credit: Neda Nevaee

I notice from the album notes that the Bloch cello suites only came into being by a bit of networking by Colin Hampton of the Griller Quartet. Do you think that kind of serendipity is important in influencing what composers end up writing and what they don’t?

That’s life in general, isn’t it? The serendipity factor is huge. Imagine if Rostropovich hadn’t met and commissioned all these composers in the twentieth century – we cellists wouldn’t have a chance to have a solo life without all these incredible pieces. I think to go against that, Bloch was always fascinated by the cello and remained so all his life, thanks also in part to Zara Nelsova, for whom these suites were written. The cello was very much part of his expressive world: it spoke very deeply to him, the sound of the cello, the capabilities of the cello, the world of the cello as a stringed instrument and as a voice. I think that he was very influenced by the fact that the Bach suites were out there, and the Kodály solo sonata: those two monumental blocks in the cello repertoire also influenced him hugely, but who knows? I mean, he was at the end of his life, he didn’t have an endless amount of time - he had to choose what he composed, so I’m very grateful that he revisited the cello in that way, because it had been 30 years since the Schelomo.

Do you think that the specific player that a piece is dedicated to affects the form that piece eventually takes – with their style in mind?

I think it depends on the composer. In the case of Bloch, he was inspired by Nelsova’s style, her energy and passion. Who knows whether he would have wanted to write a different piece for a different cellist – it could be have been simply that she was his ideal cellist. This I could imagine well: she’s certainly one of mine! I think she’s an underrated genius – the recordings are simply phenomenal, and in my opinion she’s up there with the greatest of the great.

Bloch felt it was vital to draw on his own Jewish identity when composing his music. Do you agree that art should necessarily draw on one’s roots?

It’s inevitable that we draw on these personal sources of inspiration, and I think with Bloch that his Jewish roots were a deep source of creative energy. It was a complex identity to have and in some ways it always has been, because it’s not perhaps as simple as Hungarian, for example: with the ethnomusicological studies which can take old samples of folk music and transcribe it (as with Bartók, Kodály etc) there’s a simpler, more linear narrative there. With the Jewish identity it’s partly fictional, it’s partly personal – Bloch drew inspiration during his Jewish period from reading the Old Testament, and it’s really subjective what he’s talking about. It’s not the same kind of ethnomusicological approach, so there’s a great source of creativity involved which I find very exciting. I know also that at times for obvious reasons he felt excluded from a certain realm of society – he felt very isolated being Jewish in a world that ultimately was anti-Semitic, to put it lightly, so I think that sense of isolation and solitude was also a source of creative energy for him, which I find very inspiring.

All three composers on this disc endured considerable political upheaval – particularly Dallapiccola in 1930s Italy and Ligeti in the wake of the events of 1956 in Hungary. Do you get the sense that this turmoil finds an outlet in their works?

Oh, most definitely - that’s why I wanted to put them together. The Ligeti maybe the least so, but I think that they each show a kind of discord, struggle and (I would hope) catharsis: there has to be an effect of redemption and I think that all of them have that to a point. The Dallapiccola perhaps is the starkest example – it was written in 1945 and it’s brutally dark, in a way, with those incredible flashes of energy and beauty and transcendence. The reason I wanted to put these pieces together was partly because of the timeframe in which they were written, not just because of the historical associations but also because of this bridge between Romanticism/tonality and atonality...There’s a lot of composers that don’t fit into either of those categories, and I find them very interesting and legitimate, each in their own way.

String quartets are often a vehicle for composer’s more personal, intimate thoughts. Do you think the same applies to solo cello genre?

Oh, yes, take the Elgar and Dvorak cello concertos, and Beethoven's sonatas! Beethoven chose to compose a cello sonata at each important period in his life, and then there's Brahms, (in the early-middle and particularly the late period), writing two masterpieces...And Schumann, and Rachmaninov, who comes out of depression and the first thing he writes is a cello sonata! So yes, I do think that the cello seems to be a voice of humanity, inner soul-searching and sometimes even redemption – it’s definitely a voice that moves many people, for whatever reason.