Adelaide Festival. Elder Hall. 11 Mar 2025
As part of the Adelaide Festival’s Daylight Express Series at the Elder Hall, French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt presented a one-off concert of virtuosic gems that was bookended by two Bach suites for Solo Cello. On a warm early-Autumn afternoon, the Elder Hall was near capacity, such is Altstaedt’s celebrity. A single bench seat was located centre stage and there was an air of anticipation as the large audience waited for Altstaedt to make his eagerly awaited entrance.
With tousled hair (think Albert Einstein or Mischa Maisky) and all-black loose-fitting informal clothes, Altstaedt strode onto the stage with his 1749 Guadagnini cello in hand, sat down, and with no fuss immediately commenced his recital with JS Bach’s Suite for Cello No.1 in G major, BWV1007. There can’t be too many people who are not at least vaguely familiar with its seductively haunting Prélude. It’s a classic ear worm, and with his Guadagnini tuned slightly lower to A415 (rather than the modern standard of A440) in keeping with a baroque era fashion, the pensive melody with its tripping arpeggios danced lightly throughout the expanse of the acoustically splendid Elder Hall.
Altstaedt cut a lonely figure on the stage, almost vulnerable, but here was a musician who is at home with Bach. Rather than being exposed to the intricacies of the dances that comprise the suites, Altstaedt makes them his own with razor sharp intonation and phrasing, and immaculately controlled dynamics. His pianissimo has devastating impact. Each of Bach’s six cello suites follows the same pattern of movements, with the Sarabande dance being the centre piece. In both Suite No.1 and Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV1011, which ended the concert, Altstaedt drew out the dreaminess and sensuousness of the Sarabandes. His readings were transporting.
Between the Bach bookends were two modern compositions for unaccompanied cello, and their contrast with the Bach was both stark and exciting.
Henri Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher, composed as a tribute to the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, was first performed in 1982 by the iconic Mstislav Rostropovitch. It requires the G and C strings to be tuned a semi-tone lower, which gives the sound of the instrument a somewhat darker colour on open strings. Altstaedt laid bare the liveliness and glittering tonal palette and striking rhythms of the three movements, especially in the concluding Vivace.
Altstaedt addressed the audience in between each composition and took the opportunity to outline interesting aspects including about the different tunings. Introducing Sándor Veress’s Sonata for Cello Solo, he opined that it is rarely played and that Veress has, by and large, been undeservedly overlooked as a composer. The sonata feels spontaneous, and there is an innate tension between logical development and form over what almost feels like extemporisation at times. As with the Dutilleux, Altstaedt finds threads that are not self-evident to someone who has little or no prior experience with the piece and uses them to shape a compelling performance. The applause for the Veress was exuberant, insistent, and richly deserved
The striking contrast between the two Bach Suites and the modernist pieces by Dutilleux and Veress made for an almost mesmeric concert that was made all the more special for being performed by one of today’s finest exponents of the cello. Not too many are wolf-whistled at concert end!
Kym Clayton
When: 11 Mar
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
