‘Music provision in many state schools lets children down’
Ivan Hewett talks to Sheku Kannehmason and Simon Rattle as they tackle Elgar’s Cello Concerto
It’s hard to believe it was only three years ago that brilliant young cellist Sheku Kannehmason won the BBC Young Musician award. Since then he has become a fixture of the music scene, as well as the perfect ambassador for classical music, arriving at just the right moment to show that the industry can be both young and diverse. Kanneh-mason’s career so far has defied gravity, soaring to heights that few other performers manage in a lifetime. He made his first Proms appearance aged only 18, his debut album broke into the Official Top 20 album chart, and he’s been named a Time magazine Next Generation Leader. He’s had 60million streams across social media, and – his biggest date yet – played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Now aged 20, he has just announced his second album. As well as a clutch of short pieces including Fauré’s wellknown Élégie and a fascinating rarity for 12 cellos by Julius Klengel, there is Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a work that’s suffused with a regret and nostalgia that seems quintessentially English, and for that reason has become the nation’s favourite. He has already tackled it on the largest public stage – the Proms. Now he’s recorded it, with a musician who now might be Kannehmason’s only rival in classical music in terms of name recognition among the general public – Simon Rattle, who also started out as a wunderkind, nearly six decades ago.
The real challenge for the young star was the concerto, not just because of its technical challenges and complex emotional world, but also because it’s been recorded by every great cellist of the past 70 years or more. Did Kannehmason feel overwhelmed?
“Actually, it didn’t bother me,” he says, a statement that on the page seems arrogant, but isn’t at all when you hear him say it in his diffident way. We’re meeting at the Royal College, where Kanneh-mason is a third-year undergraduate. He looks like any other student, except that he has an overnight bag (he’d played a concert in Dublin the day before) and a loping, springy gait that reveals the sportsman (his love of football is well known).
“I mean, I have listened to other cellists,” he continues in his quiet way, “particularly Jacqueline du Pré, who was a huge inspiration to me when I was young, but really it’s the score that guided me.” Did he get a sense of Elgar the person from the piece? “Yes, it’s very sad, troubled music and also very honest, in the way it portrays his feelings” (the piece is often said to be a reflection of Elgar’s desolate feelings after the death of his wife). “It’s also very vulnerable as well, which I think is something everyone can relate to … which is why it shouldn’t be too…”
Too what? Too overtly emotional? He doesn’t want to say yes to that. But one gets a sense that it’s the introverted nature of the piece that appeals to Kannehmason, who, despite his ease, comes across as somewhat introverted himself. Rattle, who I spoke to on the phone at his home in Berlin, is working with the cellist for the first time. He says this was the quality he found very appealing. “He’s a very internal person, and this comes across in the playing. It’s exactly what you don’t expect from such a young person. He’s a poet, I would say, or actually a mix of poet and unbelievably don’t-give-up hard worker.”
Kanneh-mason says that Rattle made him “very free to be spontaneous and creative. There was a sense of discovering new things as we went through the piece… I had a small audience, which always helps. I don’t like to play to a microphone.” It falls to Rattle to point out who this audience was. “Actually, it was his whole family – it was a lovely thing to see.” They must have filled an entire row in Abbey Road Studio’s balcony, as Sheku has six hugely talented siblings, including an elder sister Isata, whose debut album, also released on Decca, went straight to the top of the classical charts.
Time was tight – the whole piece was recorded in a day – but as Rattle says, the young star never flagged. “He just kept going. The requests for retakes kept coming from the producer at the desk and he was fine with that. When I was saying, ‘We’re
losing the will to live here,’ Sheku would just grin. Right at the end we did the whole piece without pausing, and amazingly he still had energy enough to be even more poetic. I was extremely impressed, though I must say my 14-year-old was more impressed that when they played football he couldn’t get the ball off Sheku, and was even more impressed when he asked Sheku which video games he liked and he replied he didn’t have time for them.”
Kanneh-mason admits to being a “harmony nerd”, but his head isn’t entirely in the clouds. He is keenly aware and accepting of the role that’s fallen to him, of being an exemplar of a more diverse vision of classical music.
“It really is a problem for a young black musician if they look at classical music and see no one that looks like them,” he says. “That wasn’t a problem for me because my older siblings were already playing music. But other kids don’t have that advantage, so I feel it’s part of my role now to inspire as many people as I can to listen to classical music, and be open to wanting to pursue it.”
He admits that going to a state school in Nottingham where music was encouraged was another lucky break. “I know that music provision in many state schools is not so good, and that’s a terrible shame because kids who could benefit are not getting the opportunity. Music can help them in many areas of life, not just music.” Now KannehMason has taken on the role of junior ambassador for inner-city music charity London Music Masters.
Asked whether he finds stardom a trial, and whether he’s learnt anything from the troubled relationship with the media of that royal couple at whose wedding he played, Kanneh-mason pauses and then says, “No, not really. I mean, it’s great to have followers on social media, and I really appreciate how that helps me to bring more people to classical media. But I’m very careful about what I put out there.”
Clearly he has the strength of character to stay the course. His latest fan, Simon Rattle, certainly thinks so. “The thing I wasn’t expecting was that complete understanding of the internal nature of Elgar’s concerto. He was absolutely not going to exaggerate anything to make a point – which is exactly the nature of the man himself. He’s friendly, extremely shy, but very much his own person.”
That’s true. Future projects include a concert involving jazz improvisation and a premiere of a cello duet by Emma-ruth Richards. Kanneh-mason is willing to be a poster-boy for BAME involvement in classical music, but only on his own terms.
Sheku Kanneh-mason releases Elgar on Decca Classics on Jan 10. Available to pre-order now