Random Thoughts by Daniel Morganstern

On November 19, the New York Violoncello Society presented a tribute to Leonard Rose on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of his birth in 1918. Since Leonard Rose played such a pivotal part in my evolution as a cellist I felt it absolutely essential to be there to celebrate his life and to share my impressions of him as a human being as well as the iconic cellist of all time.

My first experience of both his greatest as a human being and as a cellist occurred at a lesson where he helped me prepare the important cello solo in Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys Overture. Considering that I was only 16 at the time and Leonard Rose was the leading cellist of the age I found it surprising that he would care so much about how I played the solo in Carnegie Hall as principal cellist of the All City High School Orchestra of New York. The first thing he did was to demonstrate over and over and over again the big octave shift from D to D hitting the first D on an upbow and the landing note heroically on a downbow an octave higher. He did this over and over telling me over and over that this was the big moment in that solo and how important it was to give it everything I had. Then he went through to the end of the solo and found five notes on the D string: B flat, A, G, A, B flat. The shift between the G and A on the first finger in diminuendo and with a certain hesitation was truly magical. These two gestures were not taught to me, they were impregnated into the marrow of my bones. I have used both of them innumerable times as a solo cellist. At the end of this lesson he gave me one piece of advice, “Nobody can absolutely guarantee that a solo will go the way you want it to, BUT there are many things that you can do to put the odds in your favor.” He also said quite off the cuff that he had played this very solo when he was principal cello of the New York Philharmonic on a French program that featured Gregor Piatigorsky, and said, “Guess who got the good review.”

To say that his playing inspired me would be the understatement of the century. I used to listen to his recordings of Schelomo and Saint Saens Concerto with the New York Philharmonic by the hour before I had any important solo or concert to play. Somehow, I felt getting his sound in my ear empowered my own sound. It has been said the best teacher is a good example, and in the history of cello playing there has been no more beautiful sound ever produced on a string instrument than Leonard Rose’s cello sound. Although I cannot claim to have even come close I can definitely say I came a lot closer because I had seen the light and moved towards it. Being the light was not my destiny, that was Leonard Rose’s destiny.

At this event many people spoke and what emerged was a pure distillation of the warmth and generosity of a great artist and a great human being, and I will always be grateful that I made the effort to be there.

There were three times in my life where Leonard Rose’s encouragement meant everything to me. The first was when I asked him for an autographed picture, which I am attaching right now. While I don’t feel that I was worthy of his beautiful inscription at that time I hope he would have felt that I justified it over the course of my cellistic life.

The second occurred when I did the first national broadcast of Swan Lake on Live from Lincoln Center. Fred Zlotkin was and still is the principal cellist of the New York City Ballet and Leonard Rose thought that Fred played the solo, and told him that it was wonderful. Fred told me this and I said “That’s the first compliment I’ve gotten from Leonard Rose in 20 years.” This performance also significantly altered Leonard Rose’s relationship to me. I’m not sure that if he knew it was me playing the solo he would have heard it the same way, since he was so fond of Fred. Anyway, 7 years later it led to the third significant moment in my relationship with Leonard Rose.

I was on the phone with him talking about vacancies in my American Ballet Theatre cello section. He recommended two cellists who were not only fantastic but became my life long friends. The first was Eric Bartlett, who shared the podium with me at this event, and Scott Balantyne. Towards the end of this conversation Mr. Rose asked me whether I would do him the favor of sending him an autographed picture for his studio. For me, that was practically the best moment of my life.

Although I have my own way of organizing a phrase of music, every phrase that I make is imbued with the vision of Leonard Rose’s gestalt: perfect intonation, beautiful sound, and elegant phrasing. To say that Leonard Rose both as a human being and as an artist was one of the great blessings of my life would be an understatement.

A few days ago, my dear friend Daniel Barrett sent me a link to some superb playing by the cellist Albert Catell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQNdQe0pgw .

One of the great turning points of my life occurred when Max Gershunoff hired me as assistant principal cello for a 17-week tour of the Royal Ballet from London. This tour featured two of the most famous dancers in the world, Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. In order to get this job, I had to audition on the two big cello solos in the repertoire, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Frankly, I don’t think I was really up to it at that time, and I’m glad the principal cellist Albert Catell (nee Abraham Katz) never got sick.

Albert Catell was a great and useful influence on me during that 17-week tour. Albert Catell was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1910 (the same year that my father was born). In 1924 he went to the Leipzig Hochschule fur Musik to study with Professor Julius Klengel, who was one of the most renowned cello teachers in the world. He completed his training there in 1927 and went to Berlin that year to work with the great cellist Emanuel Feuermann. He left Germany in 1936 as the Nazi threat loomed over the horizon. He joined the Israel Philharmonic as solo cellist and played there under many great conductors including Toscanini and Furtwangler. It was no wonder that Albert harbored a positive dislike for me, considering me untalented and a young whippersnapper. Fortunately, the contractor, Max Gershunoff and the conductor, John Lanchbery, had a much more positive view of me, which enabled me to continue as Albert’s assistant for the next three years at the Metropolitan Opera House. That however did not deter me from appreciating the way he played the big solos in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Giselle. From the link which I have included (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQNdQe0pgw), it should be easy to imagine the way he played the big solos in the ballet repertoire. He played the opening of the Swan Lake solo in a grand style, using many separate bows and lots of vibrato. That became the model for my own interpretation of that solo which I played three to four hundred times in public. He had a similarly large and romantic approach to the beautiful solo in Sleeping Beauty, and also Giselle. Most impressive for me was the way he played The Swan with the famous Russian ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya, in Madison Square Garden. His sound absolutely dominated that huge arena. I learned most of what I knew about laying out a cello solo from watching him do it. It’s ironic that years later, I was the one to play all of these big solos on the national television broadcasts. Nevertheless, I owe him big time for what I learned from his playing.

Because Albert had studied extensively with the famous pedagogue, Julius Klengel, I offered to pay him $25 a lesson to show me how Klengel’s system would increase my security in the left hand. He did show me one of Klengel’s exercises, which I have used to warm up for Strauss operas such as, Salome and Elektra. I did not embrace his idea that you should be able to play everything in the cello repertoire including such works as Davidoff concertos, Romberg concertos, and a whole raft of short pieces, in order to sound credible on the important basic repertoire that all cellists play (or try to).

Albert Catell bought two bows for $300 from someone he met in one of the cities we travelled to. One was a Bausch and the other was a Knopf. However, he only wanted to keep the Bausch. I had been after Albert to teach me how to do a particular type of ricochet bowing for weeks, finally after buying these bows, he told me he would teach me how to do the bowing if I bought the Knopf for $175. As it turned out the Knopf was a wonderful bow, well worth the money and probably a lot more. And I still have it. After Albert taught me how to do the bowing so I had no problem doing it on command, he said, “Now that I showed you how to do it, you can do it on any bow.”

Never losing a chance to put me down, many years later Albert Catell came into the shop of Dov Buk. My cello was out and Albert took a look at it and asked what it was. I said, “It’s a Guadagnini.” He said, “It doesn’t look like a Guadagnini.” To which I replied, “That depends on who’s looking.”