Being yourself

For as long as I can remember, I looked up to many cellists of the past.

So much so that I often thought as a young cellist that there was no point to record again the Dvorak cello concerto after Rostropovich or the Haydn D Major concerto after Maurice Gendron. The initial admiration and awe quickly morphed into curiosity and inspiration as I tried to understand what those great players were doing to sound so beautiful and how I could improve my own playing that way.

Still today, I have much admiration for many modern cellists, and I still look for keys to help myself. I know how much I learned from my own BSO colleagues through my time in the cello section.

But one day comes a time when you have to find your own way. And this may be our hardest challenge as a musician. It is so easy to reduce musical aspirations to matching someone else’s playing but what is the point? The most special and meaningful qualities you can bring to the table as a musician are those that are yours and yours alone.

A defining moment in my cello path was my encounter with Bernard Greenhouse. Although heavily influenced by Casals, he himself mentioned the great master telling him he sounded too much like a copy and should break free. But this is not as easy as you think. It is so reassuring to rely on someone else’s ideas.

My belief is that what makes you unique is what is tied to your own personality in life, not just to technical matters such as vibrato, shifting, etc… And sometimes it can feel very vulnerable to let all facets of yourself come through. But if you do that, it rings true to the audience and that is a unique emotional connection. That is why understanding yourself is also part of being a musician and why hours in the practice room are not the only key to great playing.