Cellists: The Sad Hero

One of the hard realities of launching a concert career in the U.S. is the necessity of a recital, preferably in Manhattan’s hallowed Carnegie Hall, the cost of which—anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000— must be footed by the artist. But when Budapest-born Janos Starker first came to America at the age of 24, he flatly refused “the social degradation of having to pay to be heard. I will only play where people are sufficiently interested to pay to hear me.”

Treasure Unearthed. He had to wait 16 years, but last week an interested audience gladly paid to hear Starker, one of the world’s finest cello players, make his belated Carnegie Hall debut. For the occasion Starker performed the U.S. première of Haydn’s Concerto in C for Violoncello and Orchestra, a work lost for nearly two centuries until it was unearthed in a castle in Czechoslovakia three years ago.

Eyes closed, brow furrowed in concentration, Starker’s attack through the shifting intricacies of the work’s opening theme, the stately second movement, and the sprightly, charging finale, was a wonder of clarity and virtuosity. His pure and singing tone was as warm and intimate as the human voice.

Starker feels that “the golden age of the cello is upon us.” Lacking the glamour or flashy attraction of the piano and violin, the cello has been a neglected child in the family of strings. France’s Jean Louis Duport revolutionized playing techniques in the late 1700s, an achievement that prompted Voltaire to exclaim: “A miracle! An ox has been changed into a nightingale!”

Modern Wealth. But the cello did not really establish itself as a solo instrument until Pablo Casals developed its rich potentialities in the early years of this century. As a result, there is a dearth of music written for the cello by the great classical and romantic composers. Starker, a professor of music at Indiana University since 1958, takes heart from the wealth of cello compositions being turned out by modern composers. But he admits that the instrument’s sober reputation might hamper its achieving the popularity of its high-strung relative, the violin.

“To the average person,” he says, “the sound of a cello means someone is slowly dying on the movie screen. It is a depressing, melancholy sound with a wailing tremolo. It cannot laugh, but it takes to agony perfectly. The cello is the sad hero who faces life with resignation.”