Program Notes: Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Recital

By A. Kori Hill

To create music is to be in conversation. Sometimes it is direct, between a commissioned composer and the intended performer. Sometimes indirect, like a composer engaging with the precedents set by a centuries-old composition. This sits at the core of Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s recital program, which spans three centuries and revels in the solo cello’s storytelling capabilities: expressive; contrapuntal; emotive; and limitless.  

Along with its fellow suites, the Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008 by Johann Sebastian Bach has been a key part of solo cello repertoire for almost a century. It is part exercise, part meditation and deeply layered, likely composed sometime between 1717 and 1720. Through the advocacy of cellist Pablo Casals in the 1920s, the suites are now canonical. The Second’s Prelude is a somber and reflective introduction, setting up the rhythmically animated Allemande. The Courante contains a brash intensity, reflecting the dance’s “running” character, while the Sarabande is the emotional heart of the work. Menuet I & II is energetic with hints of reservation, while the Gigue melds the prior movement’s stoicism with the Courante’s whirling ferocity.  

Prayer for the Senses by Gwilym Simcock was written for Kanneh-Mason, one of 200 compositions commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music to celebrate the institution’s bicentennial. Simcock and Kanneh-Mason are both RAM graduates, the former now a professor at his alma mater in addition to an internationally lauded pianist and composer. 

Prayer for the Senses contains clear episodic sections. The first contains little linear movement, leading into the second, full of quicker rhythmic figures and subdued ferocity. The third begins with a return to the first section’s character, but quickly unfurls a previously hidden intensity. The fourth section is a return to frustrated lyricism, while the fifth is spectral and haunting, making use of the cello’s upper register. The final section is a return to the motivic figure of the opening, this time soft, reserved, disappearing. Prayer for the Senses centers the history and significance of improvisation to cello technique, no small thing considering Simcock’s own background in classical and jazz piano and composition.  

Benjamin Britten wrote his three cello suites for Mstislav Rostropovich, inspired by Rostropovich’s new way of playing the cello, “almost a new, vital way of playing music.” Like Kanneh-Mason, Rostropovich did not shun the modern for the traditional or vice versa; he was a focused and respected interpreter of Bach and premiered Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in 1960. Britten left that performance intrigued, leading to the two men becoming collaborators and friends. The suites count among several works Britten composed for this “gloriously uninhibited musician.” 

Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello, Op. 72 was completed in 1964; premiered and recorded by Rostropovich in 1965 and 1969, respectively. Instead of a prelude, Britten begins his cello suite with a Canto primo, drawing upon a canto’s formal function of dividing long form poetry. The first canto moves to the whimsical-serious tension of the Fuga: Andante moderato, followed by the gorgeously morose Lamento: Lento rubato. Canto secondo is hushed and creeping, leading to the folk bravura of the Serenata and extended techniques of the Marcia: Alla marcia moderato. The Canto terzo is darker than its predecessors, segueing into the eerie, sparkling Bordone. Moto perpetuo e canto quarto: Presto is a rhythmic dash that brings the suite full circle with the final canto, a return to the Canto primo’s energy.  

Guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brouwer is one of the major stylistic voices of contemporary guitar, writing for both stage and film, and influenced by a diverse range of styles, from the Baroque and 20th century modernism to Afro Cuban music. Born in Cuba in 1939, he studied cello as a young man, and this has led to significant output for that instrument, most recently in his Cello Sonata No. 2, which was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society for Kanneh-Mason.  

This sonata has not been recorded, living instead in the minds and memories of its performer and audiences. If Brouwer’s First Cello Sonata is any indication, his Second will be just as rhythmically diverse and emotionally vast. As Brouwer shared in an interview with Classical Guitar in 2018, “Composition is not calligraphy, but sound ... I can change musical ideas but I cannot alter themes. Every piece should have a magical moment. This helps to breathe the music. It is not easy. If I have an idea, it immediately takes on 10 possible directions. The older I become, I find it more difficult to compose because of the various possibilities and directions one musical idea can take.” 

Five Preludes by Edmund Finnis was also part of the RAM 200 years celebration, premiered by Kanneh-Mason at the Royal Academy of Music in 2021. Like Simcock and Kanneh-Mason, Finnis was born, educated and established his career in England. He now serves as a composition professor at RAM and maintains a busy schedule of commissions in the United Kingdom and beyond. 

Like Rostropovich and Britten’s cello suites, Kanneh-Mason recorded Finnis’ Five Preludes on his 2022 album Song. Prelude I centers rich lyricism; Prelude II explores sympathetic vibrations. Prelude III is emotional peaks and valleys, the most linear of the movements thus far. Prelude IV is a return to the ethereal and circular while Prelude V merges elements from the previous four. Finnis takes us on a journey through sound quality and character, revealing how those sounds impact our ears, minds and hearts.  

The Suite for solo cello by Gaspar Cassadó brings the recital full circle. The Spanish cellist-composer was deeply impacted by the artistry of his countryman and teacher, Pablo Casals. Cassadó also left a significant impact on contemporary cello playing: he was the first cellist to string his instrument with steel rather than gut strings. And his compositions pushed the limits of the cello’s resonant capabilities.  

Completed in 1926, the Suite for solo cello is in three movements. Like Britten and Finnis, Cassadó engaged with the formal precedents of Baroque suites on his terms. Preludio-Fantasia is full of crunchy harmonies, building upon the prelude’s improvisatory roots. Sardana is rustic and light, its title and character coming from the Catalan dance of the same name. The final movement, Intern e Danza, is virtuosic deftness, classical lyricism and Iberian folk rhythms: a microcosm of all the brilliant expression of this instrument. 

With his return to Seattle, Sheku Kanneh-Mason brings a program that connects him to the legacy and ingenuity of past generations as well as to his contemporaries.