"Cello and piano move in organic unity and are beautifully balanced."
Luister, 08-11-2019ZOLTÁN KODÁLY – Works for and with Cello
“The piece is unlike no other of its kind”, Béla Bartók affirmed: “the world of ideas it contains is entirely new”. Timbre acquired an unusual, novel dimension by having the two lowest strings tuned one half-step down, to B and F#, respectively. Thus the three lower strings form a B Minor chord, which Kodály places in particular prominence at the onset of the sonata……
Julian Steckel was inspired to tackle this “Everest of cello literature” for the first time at the age of fifteen. The technical challenge was certainly exciting in itself, but he was also fascinated by the music’s beauty, and by Kodály’s special musical language – “even though at that time I didn’t yet know what was Hungarian about it, or what came from Debussy or other sources”, he remarks. Steckel proceeded to work on the sonata with several cellists including the venerable Hungarian-American legend Janós Starker. He studied the work’s historical background: “When you know where a certain music is coming from, it reinforces the sort of telepathic connection you feel with the audience, and you end up playing much more convincingly”. Janós Starker, for one, insisted that “all the beginnings, including those in the slow movements, are consonant. You should never play as if you were murmuring. In this music, none of the beautiful cantilenas ever emerge out of nothing. You must always remain entirely clear in your expression and in the way you produce the sound. The fact that the music is rhapsodic should not entice you to start playing freely all the time. Precise rhythm is of utter importance. Otherwise you would be fishing in troubled waters, and the music would become a sort of goulash soup.” ……
The same applies to the Duo for Violin and Cello, op. 7. Kodály wrote it in 1914, at the onset of World War I, just before the solo cello sonata. At that time he and his wife were in Switzerland. “We had to spend several days in a village on the border to Tyrol. That is where I was suddenly seized by a vision of this duo in my mind”, he wrote in 1924. “It remains to be seen whether others can sense something of the indescribable greatness of the mountains, or, rather, the dark premonition of impending war in this work.” ….
A certain quality of plainness is exactly what Steckel loves about the Sonatina: “With extremely simple musical elements as a point of departure, Kodály manages to create something truly ingenious in its originality, and moving in its simplicity. What a beautiful work!” ….
© 2019 Eva Blaskewitz
Brimming with energy, Antje Weithaas brings her compelling musical intelligence and technical
mastery to every detail in the score. Her charisma and stage presence are captivating, but never
overshadow the works themselves. Her wide-ranging repertoire encompasses a large portion of
major concerto and chamber music works from the Baroque age to the present day.
As a soloist, she has made appearances with a great number of orchestras in Europe and around
the globe, collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitri Kitayenko, Sir Neville
Marriner, Marc Albrecht, Yakov Kreizberg, Sakari Oramo, and Carlos Kalmar.
With her infectious zest for communication, Antje Weithaas has become a sought-after leader in
“Play-Conduct concerts” with internationally renowned chamber orchestras. She was Artistic Director
of the Camerata Bern for almost ten years and still returns to work with them on a regular basis.
Her concerts as Associated Artist of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in the 2021/22 season led
to an immediate re-invitation.
Weithaas’s recordings include the solo sonatas of Bach and Ysaÿe, the Ligeti horn trio, Beethoven
quartets, Schubert trios, and the violin concertos of Beethoven, Schumann, Berg, and Khachaturian.
More than anything else, Antje Weihaas is a chamber music musician par excellence and is playing
with many high qualified partners.
She won the Kreisler Competition in Graz in 1987 and the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988, as
well as the renowned Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hanover in 1991. Together
with Oliver Wille, she recently assumed the artistic directorship of the Joachim competition.
After teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts, Antje Weithaas was appointed to a chair at the Hochschule
für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in 2004, where she has acquired a pre-eminent worldwide reputation
as a violin teacher. She plays on a 2001 Peter Greiner violin. www.antje-weithaas.de
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages.
Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as well, with his Psalmus hungaricus (1923) en his opera Háry János (1926) as the pinnacles of his musical career. The core of his body of work consists of vocal music, in particular works for choir, but his instrumental music is just as impressive. His master piece Laudes Organi, written one year before his death, truly proves that Kodály's creative energy stayed with him to the bitter end.
Cello and piano move in organic unity and are beautifully balanced.
Luister, 08-11-2019
In the performance of Steckel, the final part of the iconic Sonata for cello solo is bursting at the seams of wildly spinning freedom
De Volkskrant, 09-8-2019
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