Monterey, Calif., resident Michelle Djokic programmed the Feb. 26 Concordia Chamber Players’ concert months before she knew her community would be ravaged by January’s torrential rains.
Despite cars and roofs being crushed by falling trees, her arts series at The Sandbox, a venue downstairs from where she lives, miraculously was still able to occur.
Thus it makes sense that Djokic, Concordia’s cellist, takes a well-deserved moment of indulgence in presenting her latest finds: two rarely performed cello quintets, the first by Boccherini, the second by Beethoven.
“This is one of those programs where I wanted to be with some colleagues that I love,” she says, “and just roll up my sleeves and eat chocolate cake all night long.”
A cellist himself, Boccherini composed more than 100 cello quintets. He wrote the “C major, Op. 30, No. 6” in 1780, when he was living in Madrid, employed by Infante Luis Antonio, younger brother of King Charles III of Spain.
Boccherini was “really in his element, those were his glory years,” says Djokic. She describes the quintet, titled “La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid” (music heard at night in the streets of Madrid), as theatrical. “It tells a story, it’s very schematic, it’s like a play going through the entire piece.” She points out this is rare for that time period and for Boccherini.
“I don’t think it was typical back in that day for string players to sound like an army or a marching band or a snare drum,” says Djokic. At one point, Boccherini even directs the cellists to hold their instruments on their laps and strum them like guitars, as if they are street musicians. Folk-influenced, some of the music is derived from songs he heard in Madrid.
What’s also unusual about this work is that it was never published in Boccherini’s lifetime. Researching the quintet via the free score access source, the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), Djokic discovered a set of variations that were not included in either the first or second edition.
“Since Boccherini never saw them published, it wasn’t his decision to eliminate the set of variations. Based on that, I wanted to include it, given that was his original vision for the piece,” she explains.
Djokic shows me a page of the score with a notation style characteristic of that era and handwritten notes by the composer, directing the musicians on how the music should be approached. “It’s not easy [to play] by any means, all of it is very technically demanding.” And yet she is confident that the audience will experience the humor and joy intrinsic to the quintet.
Similarly, concertgoers will be surprised by the magnificence of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata,” arranged for cello quintet. Djokic “stumbled across” it as she was searching for viola quintets in the IMSLP. Since she hadn’t programmed a Beethoven work in a long time, she was in search of a piece rarely heard, as she always is.
The arrangement was definitely written during Beethoven’s lifetime, though it is not certain that he did so himself since it was not signed by him. “Whether he penned it or not, he was certainly aware of it,” says Djokic. “That, for me, gives it a lot of credibility.”
She anticipates the violinists “may feel robbed, not having the melody all the time, but for the violist and cellists it’s going to be a real thrill. We all get a little piece of the piano action in there. For the audience it will be fun since the Kreutzer sonata is so familiar, just as when we performed the Goldberg variations as a string trio.”
There will be two newcomers to the Concordia roster. After an eight-year tenure as cellist for the Kronos Quartet, Jeffrey Ziegler has collaborated with such great artists and composers as Philip Glass, Yo-yo Ma, Laurie Anderson and John Corigliano. A soloist with major symphony orchestras, Ziegler has released his latest album: “Houses of Zodiac: Poems for Cello by Paola Prestini.ssr.”
Korean-American violinist Anna Lee made her professional debut at the age of six, performing the first movement of the Paganini “Violin Concerto No. 1” with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. After studying in The Juilliard School’s pre-college division, she majored in comparative literature at Harvard College. Lee travels worldwide as a concert soloist, chamber musician, and teacher.
Tickets to the Feb. 26 Cello2Cello concert are available at concordiaplayers.org. It will take place at 3 p.m., at Trinity Church, 6587 Upper York Road, Solebury. On Feb. 25, there will be a free open rehearsal at Rago Auctions, 333. N Main St., Lambertville, N.J., at 3 p.m., followed by a cocktail reception and a viewing of the Ellison auction collection.
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