Fast-rising star: Spanish cellist Asier Polo

Asier Polo, born in Bilbao, is fast becoming one of the leading cellists of his generation, at home in Spain and around the world. He has performed all over Europe and toured South America, and his few North American appearances have been important ones: Carnegie Hall, and this MCO concert!

Two works by MCO composer-in-residence Serge Arcuri will also be featured.

A discovery in Spain

As Anne Manson works around the globe, ideas for MCO concerts are percolating away in her maestro mind. In Spain recently, two concerts were planned for this season, the first being this concert with cellist Asier Polo.

"I worked with Asier two years ago in Spain. He is extraordinary and I thought we have got to get him to the MCO! He’s the best cellist in Spain, and of a truly international calibre."

Pre-concert event

Students of MCO Principal Cellist Yuri Hooker; 6:45 pm

Programme

Serge Arcuri
Ties
Canada Council commission, world premiere

Luigi Boccherini
Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major (G 47)

Serge Arcuri
L’Hiver

Franz Joseph Haydn
Cello Concerto No.1 in C Major (HobVIIb:5)

Concert sponsor: Investors Group

Asier Polo

Asier Polo is fast becoming one of the leading cellists of his generation, renowned both in his native Spain and in other European countries. Says Anne Manson, "I worked with Asier two years ago in Spain. He is extraordinary and I thought we have got to get him to the MCO! He's the best cellist in Spain, and of a truly international calibre."

Polo has toured South America with the National Orchestra of Spain (Frühbeck de Biurgos conducting) and performed concerts with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Bergen Philharmonic, Dresdner's Philharmonie, Opera Orchestra of Nice, the National Orchestra of Bordeaux, Prague's Chamber Orchestra, Basel's Philharmonic and the Monterrey Symphony Orchestra (California). He has also performed with most of the major Spanish orchestras and has been invited to play in many European festivals.

The critically acclaimed cellist shared the stage with Alfredo Kraus during the last years of the famous tenor's career, performing in concert halls such as Maggio Fiorentino (Florence) and Covent Garden (London), as well as with artists like Josep Maria Colom, Gereard Caussé and the Janacek Quartet. He recently appeared at the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in New York.

Current and future engagements include concerts with Dresdner Philharmonie, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (Turin), Monterrey Symphony Orchestra (California) Huntsville Symphony Orchestra (US), Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Méjico, Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria (Méjico), Orquestra de Teatro Lirico de Gagliari, Orquesta Sinfônica do Estado de Sâo Paulo, Orquesta Nacional de España, symphonic orchestras of Sevilla, Bilbao, Principado de Asturias, Murcia, Baleares, Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga among others.

Asier Polo has recorded for Claves, RTVE, Marco Polo and Naxos. Spanish composers G. Ercoreca, Luis de Pablo and Antón García Abril have all dedicated works to this outstanding musician. He teaches at the Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco. He plays a Francesco Rugieri instrument (Cremona 1689).

Ties
Serge Arcuri

The composer has written
the following note:

Since I was writing for a string ensemble, I thought of the multiple meanings of strings. This brought me to ties and all of its meanings. Should it be attachments like affection, bonds, links between two or more notes, knots, all musical references. It also made me think about the string theory vibrating at different frequencies and harmonics in the universe. The piece was commissioned by the MCO with support from The Canada Council.

Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, G. 479
Luigi Boccherini

Equally celebrated as composer and cellist, Boccherini spent most of his life outside his native country, Italy. In 1766, he embarked on a concert tour that took him first to Paris, where he earned considerable acclaim, then on to Madrid in 1769. He won additional accolades at the Spanish court, where he received the patronage of Infante Don Luis, brother of King Carlos III. He spent the years 1787-1797 in Berlin, as court composer to King Frederick William II of Prussia, himself a good amateur cellist. After the king's death, Boccherini returned to Spain and spent the rest of his life there.

His music has much in common with Haydn's. Musicologists of the day noticed the resemblance, but having formed the opinion that the Italian's compositions lacked the depth and fire of the Austrian's, they dismissed Boccherini as "the wife of Haydn." In a letter that Boccherini wrote in 1798 to Ignaz Pleyel, his Paris publisher, he offered the following more temperate self-appraisal: "Everyone who knows me does me the honour of regarding me as a man of probity, honourable, sensitive, good-natured and affectionate as my musical compositions show me to be."

His numerous chamber music compositions are widely considered his finest creations. Especially valued are the attractive quartets (102 of them) and quintets (125) for strings. In an act of innovation, the latter pieces feature a second cello rather than the more common second viola. The result is music of exceptional tonal warmth and richness. Franz Schubert would use the identical instrumentation in the glorious quintet he composed in 1828.

Boccherini also created a dozen concertos for cello. All of them date from the early phase of his career, and it's quite likely he created them for his own performance. After he retired from performing during the mid-1770s, he appears to have lost interest in them, making no effort to have them published or circulated. He even left them out of the catalogue of compositions that he had been compiling since 1760 (it was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s). Only five of the concertos were published during his lifetime, and the twelfth concerto surfaced as recently as 1987, in a library in Naples.

This Concerto in D Major for cello and string orchestra was published in 1770. It has a light, sunny, decidedly Italianate personality. In the first movement, the soloist sings attractive, agile melodic lines that wouldn't sound out of place in an opera. The second movement opens with an orchestral prelude filled with imposing solemnity. The soloist enters with the main theme, a lyrical melody resembling a hymn tune. The soloist leads a merry and spirited peasant dance to conclude the concerto.

L'Hiver (Winter)
Serge Arcuri

The composer has written the following note
for this piece, which he composed in 2006:

Commissioned by Angèle Dubeau and her string ensemble, La Pietà, the project was to give to four composers the occasion to be inspired each one by Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I rapidly chose 'Winter' for the dramatic effect of it. Even if we cannot compare our winters to those of Venice, they are even more epic in our country.

Cello Concerto in C Major, H.VIIb:1
Joseph Haydn

Haydn spent the final 48 years of his life in the employ of the Esterházys, a noble Hungarian family that maintained lavish estates in and around Vienna. His numerous responsibilities included composing operas, symphonies, chamber and vocal music, as well as maintaining the court orchestra and library. Having a superb orchestra to work with was a crucial tool in his quest to expand the contents and meaning of the symphony as a form of music. What more could a composer ask than to have his new pieces played immediately by a crack ensemble?

In gratitude to his musicians, Haydn composed many pieces designed specifically to showcase the superb individual performing skills many of them possessed. One such work is the Cello Concerto in C Major. Haydn wrote it, probably during the mid-1760s, for Joseph Weigl, leader of the cello section in the Esterházy orchestra. The two were on quite friendly terms, as displayed both by Haydn's gift of this excellent composition, and by the fact that he also served as godfather to one of Weigl's sons.

The concerto was known to exist for many years, based on Haydn's inclusion of it in a register that he kept of his own works, but the music itself had vanished. It only came to light again in 1961, when a set of authentic parts turned up in the Czech National Library in Prague. They had been sitting for nearly 200 years, undisturbed and uncatalogued, in the personal collection of the Kolovrat-Krakovsky family. The concerto was copied without delay and received its modern premiere on 19 May 1962 at the Prague Spring Festival. Miloa Sádlo was the soloist and Sir Charles Mackerras conducted the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. It has quickly proven itself an international favourite.

The opening movement is confident and sunny. It demands much of the soloist, both technically and expressively. A lyrical slow section follows, one which exploits the cello's warm, vocal qualities to the full. The concerto concludes with a rhythmic tour-de-force, one of Haydn's most brilliant exercises in virtuoso writing.