MAXIM CALVER FOR THE SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Maxim Carver and his Cello
One chap and his cello, behind him two modernist iron angels assist at the Ascension of Jesus. This is Selwyn College Chapel, a spare dramatic setting for the amazing talent of Maxim Calver. He had set himself an ambitious task – the Cello Suite No 1 in G major. First of all it is such a heart warmingly familiar piece -everyone has some instant association with those opening bars of the Prelude. But Maxim, a charming almost seraphic stage presence took it all on with unhurried skill.
Another triumph for the increasingly glorious Cambridge Summer Music Festival which still has eleven days to go and a rich choice of music still to explore.
Maxim Calver is feted all over Europe – BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2018 lead to a fabulous appearance five years later in Hamburg where he performed Schumann’s Cello Concerto. But back Bach. As Maxim explained, poor Bach hardly ever left his chapel appointment and his music remained unexplored until after his death. Today it seems he is the composer with more to offer than any other. Listening to this talented player with so much soul in his technique was positively meditative, no wonder so long after its inception it is famous throughout the world.
Cello Suite No 2 in D minor really is a huge change, sharper and in another key altogether very different from the familiar First. But to have it rendered in this pure cello form was for both works, a moving experience. From Dave Brubeck to Sonny Rollins, interpretations of Bach have flourished. This was the pure unadulterated – yet demanding – version straight and from a performer with his own heart in every movement of his bow.
The composition of Gaspar Cassado was a massive change. Move over three hundred years and we were suddenly in the 1920s jazz age, The cello can still do modern music and pack it with a joyous crazy span of intriguing references. Yes, there was a take from Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe – hard to miss actually – but I also spotted snatches of Berlioz and Rossini coded into the works ,Fantasia and Intermezzo.
A long way from the austere role of the Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold at long forgotten Cothen in 1720 with Bach and his huge family the pious servants of the ruler. But a player as brilliant as this can travel those centuries and with his one solo instrument take us with him right to the turbulent shores of modernism.. Wonderful
