Interview, Johannes Moser on being Alone Together

Not surprisingly, the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a flurry of solo albums, as instrumentalists cut off from one another and confined to quarters explored the possibilities for musicmaking alone.

As its name might suggest, cellist Johannes Moser's Alone Together takes a different approach, with Moser putting his twin fascinations with the cello and cutting-edge music technology to use, resulting in an album featuring himself as not merely a soloist but an entire ensemble.

A few months back, I spoke to Moser about this album, the inspirations behind it, and the role he sees technology of this kind playing in the future of classical music.

This recording is quite hard to categorise - it both is, and isn't, a solo album. What was the initial inspiration for putting this programme together?

The seed for this project was laid many years ago; when I was experimenting with the electric cello, I started using Ableton [digital audio and sequencing software package] and before that a Boss looper pedal. I quickly realised firstly that it's a ton of fun, but secondly that the cello is really not the best instrument for it. It has such a dense sound, and so many overtones and layers, so if you put too much over it it becomes very mushy and dense.

Fast-forward to Corona, when we were all forced to do things by ourselves, and I was thinking: How can I take such a multi-layered project and make it see-through and actually nice to listen to?

I ran into the limitations using the equipment that I had, and then when Platoon came along and suggested doing it in Dolby Atmos [three-dimensional surround sound], it occurred to me that this could be a way to actually splice up the sound in a way that would mean I could put so many cellos next to each other without the sound blending too much.

So the spatial element is in part a solution to that problem of 'mush'?

I think so. A much bigger philosophical question is why we still need recordings when everything has been recorded - you want something else, not just a lesser reproduction of a live event. It needs to add something rather than taking something away, and so much is taken away in a normal CD by comparison - you don't have the sense of the music being crafted in that moment. Adding something like the spatial element and a sonic experience that you can't really get in the real world, is a way forward.

The idea at first was just to do two or three tracks, and I immediately suggested coming up with more; initially it was going to be just some works for cello ensemble and we'd see how far we got. I had these commissions going at the same time, for the octophonic setup with eight speakers, which basically got axed through Corona because there was no way that we could get an audience into a circle of speakers like that. So we decided to put this kind of experience on the album instead.

That idea of having the audience in a circle evokes things like Tallis's Spem in alium, often performed encircling the audience, and the polychoral works of the Venetian Renaissance; were those influences on you for this album and thinking about space?

Spem was actually the prime inspiration - in 2001 I got to see the first installation of Janet Cardiff's art installation The Forty Part Motet in Canada, using forty speakers. What I found inspirational was that you could go to a speaker and hear one voice, and then go into the middle and hear the whole choir. I felt that gave a lot of agency and power to the audience.

Janet Cardiff discusses her Forty Part Motet project in a short video for London's Tate Modern art gallery

It got me thinking: Would this be possible with the cello? Twenty years later I find myself in this situation - pre-pandemic, because we started the project before Corona - and I thought that finally I'd be able to make it work. And it came just at the right time, because then we could record it straight away in Atmos. We did it once in a forest, and the speakers were hidden so that people could walk into the sound and explore it. This is an experience that you're not going to get with your standard symphony orchestra. It's not going to replace the other thing, and indeed it shouldn't, but it's something different.

Given all the technology involved, will these pieces also work live, or do they have to remain a creation of the recording studio?

Yes, they will – when I was commissioning the composers I specified that we would have either a Max [music/media visual programming language] patch, or Ableton, that would change the sound in a way that would be fed to the speakers, but that all the sound would originate from the cello. Ellen Reid and Nina Young followed that, but all the other composers asked me if we could involve pre-recorded material, and in the end I pulled back from insisting on too much; I didn't want to stifle their creative process, and I also didn't want to end up with six pieces that were too similar.

We're going to continue commissioning other composers - this is just the first round - but I'm glad that it's been so varied. I have to say that the pieces that just took their sound from the cello, instead of relying on pre-recorded tracks, are more successful with the audience. If there is a lot of pre-recorded material included, it's very hard for an audience to understand what is pre-produced and what is contributed by the cello.

And the logical conclusion in the other direction is that you might as well have two thousand people in a concert hall listening to a CD player...!

Exactly. Though if you really made an act out of it - if you have a record player and a big armchair and someone puts the needle on and you listen intently – then why not…? But that's not what I'm going for. People need to see the musical creation happening. As much as I love the adventure of electronic music we are still very much at the beginning of it. We have left behind the fascinating time of Stockhausen where he was creating a whole sound-world by experimenting with about five effects. Now we can open up Ableton or Max For Live or Apple Logic and have a gazillion effects at our fingertips - so many toys that you don't know what to play with. For me the greatest creativity comes from a certain amount of restriction. You have to limit yourself to a smaller toolset and then try to do the most possible with that.

There are six new commissions on this album - you've mentioned a little about what you wanted from the composers, but how did that process actually work? Was there some back-and-forth between you about the remit?

Initially the biggest challenge was that we needed to find composers who were interested in the cello and in new classical writing, but also tech-savvy to a certain degree. And it turns out that that intersection is rather small. We started with a meeting laying out what the fixed elements were: eight speakers and me in the middle. Halfway through the process we checked in on them again, and it became clear that they had ventured into completely their own directions. We had individual discussions, of course, but we also had a group meeting and everyone was kind of eyeing the other composers up: 'Do they have a better idea than mine?' It turned out that they had each brought to the table what was most meaningful to them. Timo Andres - who I don't think even knows how to turn on his computer! - just wrote a normal cello octet because he loves chamber music, and another wrote something with a very intricate Max patch [miniature computer program] because she loves programming.

It was also interesting how involved the composers wanted to be in the recording process. Some just entrusted us to do the best we could, and others wanted to hear the premix and then choose the voicings and so on.

And when a piece is electronic, maybe that line is a bit blurred in any case - you don't just write a score and then hand it over to a performer when you're done.

Exactly - for example, when I did Exhalation with Chris Cerrone, he had pre-recorded some voices but I wanted to do those voices on the cello. So I recorded them, sent him the files, he incorporated them, sent it back to me, then I played something over it.

It was very different, for example, with Ellen Reid's piece Somewhere there is Something Else, which is also used in the music video, where you just play into the patch and the patch does something, and there is no interaction needed with her any more. This is also the most successful piece in a live setting, because it's the most relatable in terms of movement connecting to sound.

Johannes Moser performs Ellen Reid's Somewhere there is Something Else.

On the subject of the instruments - you have the 'acoustic' cello, the 1694 Guarneri, but you're also playing two different electric cellos, a Ned Steinberger and a Yamaha. How different are these in terms of what they contribute - is it the subsequent computer processing that makes the difference or is the instrument also key?

You would think that the sounds would be rather similar, because it's just a piezo pickup and a string. But then people would think that about electric guitars and that's just not the case - and it's the same with cellos. In addition, the Ned Steinberger has a low F string as well as the four standard ones, so that's a physical difference and gives you almost the range of a double bass.

The good thing about the Yamaha is that it's very similar in feel to an acoustic cello, so it’s great if you have something more technically challenging and you really need to hit the notes rather than focusing more on creating an atmosphere. The Steinberger only really has that middle console, and it's very hard for orientation reasons to find the notes on the fingerboard. I feel like it needs quite a bit of practice and quite a bit of help - maybe even putting stickers on as visual aids, like when you're just starting out on the instrument!

Johannes Moser holding the Ned Steinberger electric cello and the 1694 Guarneri

I've also recorded some of the pieces that were meant for the electric cello with a close-miked acoustic cello because it is so much fuller in sound. And you'd think that the electronics do most of the work, but there is a difference in how you feed into that system. Electric cellos, simply because of lack of demand, are still at the beginning of their development. Just as with composers, also with instrumentalists, there's a very narrow crossover of really tech-savvy experienced musicians that are also interested in electronic sounds, in programming a Max patch and things like that.

I think that is actually a great gift - at some point you feel like you know most of what there is to know about, say, the Dvořák concerto, whereas this offers you something new to explore. I hope that the stuff I'm doing now is just the beginning of another journey.

When I hear musicians who say they're getting bored of their jobs, I think that's not necessarily the music's fault; they’re just not willing to take that extra step into the unknown and make themselves vulnerable. This project itself, for instance, could have totally backfired - you just don't know what you're going to get with commissions!

For the benefit of non-string-players such as myself... how different is it playing the five-string instrument compared to a four-string one? Do you have to re-learn most of your technique?

It's very strange. At first you feel fine, and then you look down and get completely disorientated. The muscle memory is quite off, so it takes some time to really get into it. Added to the disorientation on the vertical side I think the horizontal feeling is also an issue - suddenly you have five strings and not four. You have to reach further over with your hand, but also the strings are just a little bit closer together.

So similar to when a pianist plays on a keyboard with slightly narrower keys than is standard?

Oh yes! And it has the same sense of suddenly being surprised at how far your hands can now reach in terms of intervals. But again, this is just another challenge.

Another thing that is sometimes overlooked about electric instruments is their completely different performative quality. In order to play the normal cello, I need to invest quite a bit of body motion in order to get a good sound. With the electric cello, it doesn't make any difference whether I do that or whether I hold the bow with two fingers and draw it very lightly over the string. So the decision needs to be: ‘Am I just acting something out here, or am I finding other motions that translate into the performative quality of the instrument?’. That was interesting when I was commissioning an electric cello concerto in 2007, from the fantastic Mexican composer Enrico Chapela. We premiered it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel and suddenly I had the realisation that I had this instrument to which normal cello technique applied, but performative quality didn't apply any more. It actually took me a couple of concerts to understand how I could use this new-found freedom.

Johannes Moser performs Chapela's Magnetar, Concerto for Electric Cello and Orchestra.

Do you find audiences react differently to different approaches to performativity? Would the dramatic opening chords of the Elgar concerto, for instance, have the same impact without the visible motion and effort of the soloist?

To be fair, I would never play the Elgar on the electric cello! I would always choose my Guarneri for that. But sometimes, for example when I'm playing in the open air, we have a situation where I'm mic-ed on the acoustic instrument, and moving around too much would take me away from the mic.

With the electric cello I mostly play repertoire that's written for the instrument, but I do see quite a big generational divide there, and I find that a little unfortunate. Recently I did a kind of post-concert with electric cello repertoire after I'd played the Schumann concerto on the acoustic, and I could see that during the electric part of the performance, some older audience members left. But also a lot of younger audience members came up to me afterwards and wanted to see the equipment and talk and be in touch.

So it takes down the barrier for the younger interested crowd, but at the same time it's not really conducive to keeping the older audience. I think it's both a blessing and a curse. But if you do both, and you're open to the idea of people leaving because they realise it's not for them - I don't judge anybody for that - then the crisis that we are all bemoaning in classical music, that we only have old audiences, might be alleviated by bringing in more modern instruments as a first step. Then of course you also need performers who are open to the experience, to also explain and explore and share that experience on a human level.