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Nicolas Altstaedt On Elgar’s Iconic Cello Concerto

23 March, 2023

The brilliant German cellist makes his Sydney debut in April. Here he explains how music is like time travel, helping us understand the past – and explores the intensely emotional Cello Concerto by Edward Elgar, a piece that, he says, contains a lifetime in just half an hour.

By Hugh Robertson

It has become one of the most famous and beloved pieces of music ever written.

Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto is one of those iconic works, its intense and impassioned opening immediately identifiable. It was voted the greatest work of the 20th century in the ABC’s Classic 100 poll in 2011, and the fifth-greatest concerto of all time in the 2007 edition.

But it wasn’t always so – in fact the premiere of the work in 1919 was a disaster. Not only did it receive insufficient rehearsal time, but it was criticised for being old-fashioned – a work by an old master whose Edwardian, grandiose style wasn’t suited to the harsh new world that had emerged following World War I.

It took almost 50 years for the work to find its audience, but when it did it caught on like wildfire. English cellist Jacqueline du Pré, a star on the rise, recorded the concerto in 1965, and captured the public’s imagination. That recording has gone on to be one of the highest-selling classical albums ever recorded, and du Pré’s performance has assumed legendary status – her own teacher, the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, stopped performing the work entirely, saying simply, "My pupil, Jacqueline du Pré, played it much better than I."

The concerto’s yearning, longing tone and sense of loss was further amplified by its close association with du Pré, who tragically died due to complications from multiple sclerosis at the age of just 42, having been forced to cease performing at just 28.

Nicolas Altstaedt
Nicolas Altstaedt. Photo by Marco Borggreve.

Certainly du Pré casts a long shadow over the work, but for Nicolas Altstaedt, one of the world’s most exciting and in-demand cellists, this rich background and history contributes to our connection with the work, rather than obscures it. Altstaedt will perform the Elgar concerto with the Sydney Symphony under Sir Donald Runnicles in April, in a series of concerts which will mark his debut with the Orchestra. Altstaedt burst onto the scene as a BBC New Generation Artist from 2010-2012, and since then has stretched his wings in all directions at once – as a soloist, a chamber musician, and artistic director, performing on both period and modern instruments – receiving awards and critical acclaim in everything to which he turns his hand.

For Altstaedt, part of the magic of music is its ability to transport us to another time, offering a window into parts of our history that we can’t ever access directly.

“If you play music, you want to understand that time in which it has been written,” he says via Zoom from his apartment in Barcelona, where he is currently on tour with the Barcelona Symphony. “That is so inspiring – music has the power to give us an impression about what people felt at that time. We cannot talk to the people from 1920, but we can listen to the music that has been written at the time and understand the impact of the war and what has been around. And to read literature, to look at art that has been done, that is, I think, very important to inhale and to live through that, to absorb it.”

“It's a bit like a historical adventure, like travelling to a different time. But then music is timeless and that's why we listen to the Elgar concerto nowadays, because it still has to tell us something. It's not just a historic monument or a piece in a museum that has outlived a few years, but it's something that is still relevant today.”

“It is our chance to get to know things about society, about mankind, through the music. Music can show us what the world is about and how the world also can be a better place. So the notes help us. And then, of course, our own visions and our knowledge about what has been happening around that score.”

The Elgar Concerto is undoubtedly a work laden with emotion, but Altstaedt is quick to point out that works as rich and detailed as this contain boundless possibilities for interpretation, and for discovering ones own emotional journey through the piece.

“Jacqueline du Pré made something out of that piece that no one had ever done before,” says Altstaedt. “It is so linked to her personal life and tragedy, so it is very touching and moving when we hear the concerto. And she really had a connection to that piece that maybe no one ever had.”

“But I would also separate very much her interpretation from the piece. The score of the concerto leaves many different possibilities. The piece itself is written down very detailed. There are very few cello concertos, almost none, that has so many explanations. You have, in some movements, on every note an explanation about articulation, tempo, dynamic phrasing. And I think they have to be considered very, very seriously if such a great composer like Elgar took the time to write it down, and it's written down very specifically.”

“So that is something we really have to refer to. But then music always leaves still space for different interpretations that can be in the in the context of, and the wish of the composer.”

Nicolas Altstaedt
Nicolas Altstaedt. Photo by Marco Borggreve.

The Cello Concerto was the final major work that Elgar wrote, despite the fact that he lived for another 15 years after completing it. That absence of new music has been taken to mean many things, but to Altstaedt it could simply be that Elgar felt he had said everything that he needed to say.

“It's very striking that after that piece he lived for quite a while still, but he didn’t write down anything significant anymore. He must have felt, ‘That's it – that is my last word. And I have no urge nor necessity to add anything anymore in my life. It feels like the final looking back, and this melancholy and this closing of the book is something that you really feel during the piece.”

“It's not a piece where you think, ‘Oh, is there something left to be said? Is there something coming?’ There's also a reduction in his language. He wrote much more complex music, so when the composer limits himself just to a very few tools, then these last few words have even more weight or even more importance.”

Altstaedt is unequivocal when considering where the piece ranks in the cello repertoire.

“The Elgar concerto is, I would say, next to the Dvořák concerto, the Romantic concerto. It is a very special piece, written by an old man who was looking back at his life. It is a very reflective, very melancholic concerto.

And it's very, very moving to go through this whole piece. It's really a lifetime that you go through. It's one life in half an hour with all its diversity. It's a great masterpiece that I always love to come back to.”

As we talk, I notice a fascinating duality in Altstaedt’s way of speaking about music. He says that he is, above all else, a devotee of the composer’s score, always returning to the source material to find the truth of a piece. He says several times that everything he needs to know is there, on the page, and it is his responsibility to study that, and to present the composer’s wishes as best he can.

And yet, when he turns to talk about the meaning of a piece, and the way that it makes people feel, then Altstaedt’s language becomes softer, more nuanced, philosophical and metaphysical and forever reaching for the intangible.

“Music is always about something that is bigger than life, and bigger than ourselves,” he says with a smile. “Music should always give a feeling to the people that they hear something that we cannot put into words, that is much bigger than what we do in our daily lives.”

“There is a horizon that music can give us that nothing else can give us.”

“That's why music is the most universal language in the world,” he continues. “Because – and it sounds like a cliche, but it is not – because anyone can understand it. And anyone who listens to the Elgar concerto, it doesn't matter from which cultural background, or from which education they come from: they can feel what it is about and they can be inspired by listening to that and being a better person after listening to such a masterpiece, I am absolutely convinced about that.”