[photo by Marco Borggreve, 2023]
❇︎ the "Rococo theme" from Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations
Antonio Meneses, cello; RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid), Yoav Talmi, cond. Live performance, 2008
[NOTE: Not to worry -- we're going to hear the whole performance. -- Ed.]
❇︎ the little Adagio from Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata
Antonio Meneses, cello; Maria João Pires, piano. DG, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, Jan. 4, 2012
[NOTE: We're going to hear this whole performance too. It's a treat! -- Ed.]
We hear above: first, an urgently flowing 2008 statement of the theme of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, shaped with subtle jolliness and moments of charming tease, with ebullient support from Yoav Talmi and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra; and from 2012, the soaring Adagio of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, with the much-loved Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. -- Ed.by Ken
This is heartbreaking.
From The Strad (online), July 8, 2024 edition:
Cellist Antonio Meneses diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer
The Brazilian cellist has been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and has stepped down from his concert and teaching schedule
Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses has announced that he has been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and has stepped down from his concert and teaching engagements with immediate effect. He made the announcement on social media on 7 July:
"Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, one of the leading musicians of his generation, has cancelled his concert schedule and stepped down from his position as a teacher. He was diagnosed in June with Gliobastoma Multiforme, an aggressive type of brain tumour.Meneses, who was born in 1957, won the first prize at the Munich International Competition in 1977 and was awarded first prize and gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982. He was a member of the Beaux Arts Trio from 1998 to 2008 and performed regularly in duos with pianists Menahem Pressler and Maria João Pires. He was featured as The Strad’s cover star in August 2012.
"Born in Recife and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Meneses is one of the most famous soloists and chamber musicians of his generation.
"Meneses is currently receiving palliative care at his home in Switzerland, supported by his family and friends, who have been an important source of comfort at such a difficult time."
THIS HIT ME JUST AFTER I'D COBBLED TOGETHER . . .
. . . last week's made-up post "Remembering János Starker on (OK, slightly after) his 100th," which left me in a cello-istic frame of mind. I had an impression of Antonio Meneses (born Aug. 23, 1957) as a cellist with a fine career, but I really didn't know his playing. One of the first things I turned up was the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations performance we sampled above, which the soloist, conductor, and orchestra combined to make 18 minutes-plus of something near pure joy.
TCHAIKOVSKY: Variations on a Rococo Theme
for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 33
Antonio Meneses, cello; RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid), Yoav Talmi, cond. Live performance, 2008 [Watch on YouTube]
The performance seems to announce itself as a sort of no-nonsense-here offering, and there isn't a lot of nonsense, and yet there's an awful lot of good feeling, and some breathtakingly lovely playing. The Rococo Variations is almost always a winning entertainment; I'm not sure, though, that I've heard it sound more substantial. And my goodness, would you listen to that super-soft playing? For now, I think this is the performance I'll first remember this lovely artist by. Thanks, Antonio!
ONE PERFORMANCE I DID FIND IN THE SC ARCHIVE . . .
. . . is of music that, by coincidence, we just heard in the Starker cellopalooza, with Henryk Szeryng and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink: the ever-radiant slow movement of the Brahms Double Concerto -- with Herbert von Karajan and the 19-year-old Anne-Sophie Mutter. (Antonio M. was all of 25.)
BRAHMS: Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102:
ii. Andante
Maestro Karajan and a couple of his "kids" in 1983
Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; Antonio Meneses, cello; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 17, 1983
Henryk Szeryng, violin; János Starker, cello; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, September 1970
It's kind of an interesting "expectations game." Say it's 1970 and you write down Szeryng's and Starker's names for session time in the Concertgebouw with Maestro Haitink and the band -- you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get, and it's going to be good. (Hint: Last week we heard all three movements of this performance.)
Maestro Karajan liked to spot up-and-comers, and while Antonio M. as noted was already a really big boy of 25, Fräulein Mutter as noted was merely 19. [AFTERTHOUGHT: She'd been only a few months past her 18th birthday when she and Maestro Karajan recorded the Brahms Violin Concerto, in September 1991. DG later thoughtfully coupled the Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto on a single CD. And a hat tip to Frank F. for reminding me about the Meneses-Karajan connection. -- Ed.] Can we hear in this glowing artifact from 1983 that a couple of really big-time careers lay ahead?
As for the music itself, what more is there to say at this point? We've got a whole bunch of performances of this movement in the archives, and it's taken a heap of firm resolve to stop myself from dragging them all out. Here there's no reason for performers to set their goals for anything less than utterly gorgeous.
WE HEARD JÁNOS S. PLAY A BACH SUITE, SO . . .
. . . shouldn't we hear Antonio M. play one too? From Starker we heard the sunny C major Suite, No. 3. From Antonio M., I'm thinking of the glorious opener of the set, the G major Suite. He made two complete recordings of the six suites, for Philips in Tokyo in October and December 1993, and for Avie in a church in Hampshire, England, in June 2004, and there are at least two posted videos of No. 1.
I was expecting to go with the (undated) later video performance, but I just couldn't get my mp3 to reflect the sound of Antonio M.'s real cello: not lush or luxuriant, but full enough, and in its sonically non-luxuriant way (which nevertheless, I should stress, allows for a broad spectrum of finely tuned textural and tonal modulating) perhaps surprisingly appealing, with a distinctive buzz, or maybe "fuzz." So we're going with the 2004 Avie recording, and especially since I'm not entirely persuaded by Antonio M.'s kind of wayward and overly emphatic performance of the opening Prélude, I thought we'd hear the second half of the suite: the sequence of the Sarabande and Menuet I-II leading directly into the concluding Gigue.
BACH: Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G, S. 1007:
Antonio Meneses, cello. Avie, recorded in St. Martin's Church, East Woodhay, Hampshire (England), June 2-5, 2004
Again, there's not much slowpokery in Antonio M.'s arsenal. But while the Sarabande isn't exactly stately, it has a strong core of dignity. I'm already getting used to the quickish Menuet I, which sets off the mysterious Menuet II it encompasses quite interestingly, and the bracing final Gigue sure rounds the suite off, um, bracingly.
Oh, there's more to hear in this music, but Antonio M.'s case is persuasive and I suspect these would be very easy performances to live with, especially along with one or two others -- for me, starting with the Starker-Mercury set. And I have an abiding fondness for the old Gendron-Philips set that I played so much in its World Series LP incarnation.
WHILE WE'RE AT IT, THERE'S A ROUSING DVOŘÁK
CONCERTO WITH ANTONIO M. ON YOUTUBE
You can watch the whole whole thing here, but for a sampling, I thought it would be fun to pick up at the soloist's first entrance, but then for proper setup kept backing up, all the way to the orchestra's final preparation for the first statement of the movement's haunting 2nd theme, by the horn (at about 0:22), then continuing on to the cello's entrance (at about 1:48), onward still till we come -- in this, the "exposition repeat" (this time with the soloist!) -- to the moment for the restatement of that 2nd theme, now by the soloist (at about 4:10).
DVOŘÁK: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104:
fragment of the exposition of i. Allegro
Antonio Meneses, cello; State of São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Nathalie Stutzmann, cond. Live performance from the Sala São Paulo, Oct. 28, 2017 [Watch the whole performance on YouTube]
WE HAVE ONE MORE GEM -- AND I THINK
YOU'RE REALLY GOING TO ENJOY THIS
Schubert's not-quite-little but certainly-not-big Arpeggione Sonata (it was written for that mercifully scrap-heaped confoundiment of a bowed six-string instrument; you could look it up) is another of those pieces that, for me at least, can seem at first like nothing much to linger over, until with repeated hearings (it's mostly cellists who've jumped into the arpeggione breach, but they cling to it pretty fiercely) it's grown on me to the point where it suddenly occurred to me that I kind of love it.
SCHUBERT: Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor, D. 821:
i. Allegro moderato
ii. Adagio (at 11:33); iii. Allegretto (at 16:01)
Antonio Meneses, cello; Maria João Pires, piano. DG, recorded live in Wigmore Hall, London, Jan. 4, 2012
Isn't this an intriguing performance? It's from a 2012 recital by Antonio M. and the distinguished Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires (born July 23, 1944), recorded live by DG in London's Wigmore Hall. Neither of our collaborators is what you'd call a "mainstream" artist, and it's a treat to observe the collaboration. Pires begins the Allegro moderato with a statement of the first theme that seems to want to make the movement a notch grander than it really is, which may have been exactly her intent. This isn't that grand a movement, but it is a movement of some substance. When Antonio M. makes his entrance, we hear the music in just the right scale. I really like the way the performers, by intention or not, have presented us with some, er, calibration issues.
In the tiny Adagio, the roles are almost reversed: Pires begins with a quite lovely but resolutely workaday intro, but then Antonio M. quickly but almost imperceptibly ups the stakes of this startlingly soaring song. Proceeding without interruption into the concluding sort-of-rondo, the team sounds like a chamber-music dream team. A really lovely performance of this offbeat piece, which has clawed its way into the regular repertory -- with a confounding array of arpeggione-substitute options -- just by being so confoundedly likable.
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