“Talking Cello the day Starker Died”
The cello always has been my secret crush. Piano was my lifetime commitment. But cello was that “other” instrument I always wondered about. Many years ago, my clarinetist daughter would ask “Daddy, if you had to play something other than piano and Indian flute, what instrument would you want to play most?” (I guess she was curious to know if the answer would change over time. But it did not.) “Cello” was my response. The cello is beautiful. Its sound is spiritual. I think of cello and I think of the Bach cello suites. Music I want to hear as I am dying. Music that will carry me to the afterlife. The cello is spiritual. It’s that deep voice that commands your attention. It’s that poetry slam where the poet clearly has something to say. All that plus mobility, eg, the cellist can take the instrument anywhere (pianists are jealous of that quality since we are stuck with whatever is there).
There is another reason why the cello is my crush. My mom did not heap praise on very many people. Like, if we went to a piano concert, afterwards, my dad generally liked the pianist and he had good reasons substantiating the claim. My mom could be quite critical. Let’s just say many pianists earned four stars, and with my mom’s vote included, four and a half. But when I was a teen, she told me about this amazing cellist. A woman named Jacqueline du Pré. She told me how she was the real deal in regards to her presence on stage, her musicianship, her technique, her passion. There was one minor glitch, however. My mom started telling me about this woman when I was about 13, which happened to be the very time that du Pre, sadly, stopped playing cello due to her MS. Although she died in 1987, she stopped playing cello by the early 1970s. I had the legendary recordings committed to memory, but I never was able to hear her live. Ditto with Pablo Casals. An amazing musician in every respect. But I never had a chance to hear him perform live. Oddly, Casals died the same year that du Pre was struck by MS. And the country was bogged down in Vietnam, Watergate, and economic stagnation. There was something about that year.
But God clearly did not want me to get too discouraged by that. Someone or something made it possible for another great cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, to enter my life the very next year. Rostropovich left the Soviet Union in 1974 and sometime soon after that, I first heard him at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. I was absolutely astounded by him. The way he could make one bow last almost like an eternal flame. The way he could bring out the poet and the spiritual muse in the cello, the way he communicated such passion…for me, those special concerts were like seeing Horowitz play piano, eg, I was in the presence of pure genius. And Rostropovich stuck by me for many years. When I was in and out of Washington, DC all those years, he was there too. Yes, by then he was the Music Director of the National Symphony, but he played cello often enough to satisfy that part of me. He stuck around National Symphony long enough for my own selfish purposes — he left his Post there only a few years before we left Washington.
Yet through all these zigs and zags, the cellist who was a constant in my life was Janos Starker. He was there when I saw the Chicago Symphony perform at either Orchestra Hall or Ravinia. He was there when I was in Cambridge as a student, or wherever I happened to be when I was on home leave from the Foreign Service. He was the principal cellist with the Chicago Symphony starting in 1952 when Fritz Reiner took over as Music Director, and eventually moved on to Indiana University where he resumed his solo career. I cannot even count how many times I heard him perform with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia. Like Pavlov’s dogs, when I hear “Starker” I think of gorgeous summer nights on the lakefront hearing music, with the Metra train going by in the background. Starker also made 160 recordings, and I am quite sure I’ve heard a large number of them one way or another. Did my mom kvell about Starker the way she talked about du Pre? No. Could Starker make one bow length last as long as an eternal flame? No again. Did I ever hear anything from Starker that could compare with the recordings I had of Pablo Casals? With a few exceptions, no. But Starker was still a superb performer, an important teacher, and he played solo and ensemble works with equal command. And for me, Starker was important because he was there. He showed up in my life, and he opened me further to the cello, cello music, the whole cello experience. And in cello as in life, success is measured by showing up. One day at a time. And for that, I feel sadness that Janos Starker passed away. May his life be for a blessing. Long live the cello!
