Four cellos and a thousand years of history
Ottawa hosts unique concert by four cellists whose instruments have stories of their own
Talent will out, it is said. And when you match it with a $6-million instrument, the musical magic can really happen.
That appears to be the case with Stéphane Tétreault, a just-turned 20-year-old cello prodigy. “I feel old now. I can’t say I’m a teenager anymore,” he said by phone from Montreal. To be an international soloist has always been his dream, he says.
He is best known in his native Quebec, where reviewers have been hailing his talent for a few years now. Tétreault started playing the cello when he was seven years old. He was reluctant at first — “I didn’t want it at all” — but his teacher finally convinced him to give the instrument a try and it has definitely worked out.
It’s all about the cello sound, he says. “A lot of people say it is the instrument that is the closest to the human voice. I think that is true. You can get a lot of variety. You can go extremely high and extremely low. I think also that you can really express the whole scope of emotion on the cello.” His favourite composer is Brahms — “anything by Brahms” especially both cello sonatas.
He has performed in concerts across Quebec and in places like Malaysia, has worked in Europe and will tour the Maritimes next fall. He has won or been a part of major international competitions. And now the University of Montreal student is headed to a unique Chamber Players of Canada concert on April 22 in Ottawa that will feature the talents of four cellists. The other participants are probably better known to Ottawa audiences: Denise Djokic, Julian Armour and Paul Marleyn. The performance features the music of Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, and Russians Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Just as intriguing, though, is the cello that Tétreault is packing to this performance. It is known as the 1707 Countess of Stanlein Ex Paganini Stradivarius cello, and it is indeed worth about $6 million.
The cello was made by the legendary Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy, during his “great period” (1707—1720), according to the American author, Nicholas Delbanco. Delbanco has written that the cello has been “copied often, physically dissected, discovered in a wheelbarrow on its way to a municipal dump and owned, at one time, by (the great 19th century virtuoso violinist Niccolo) Paganini.” Afterwards, it belonged to the Countess of Stanlein, purchased for her by her husband as a gift in 1854. She died in 1908. Until his passing in 2011, the cello belonged to the great American cellist Bernard Greenhouse, who had it for 54 years.
The cello was purchased by Jacqueline Desmarais, the spouse of Paul Desmarais, the head of Power Corp, for Tétreault. She had heard Tétreault play in October 2010 and was taken with his ability. They discussed the purchase of a cello for Tétreault, and were fortunate that “The Countess” — Tétreault’s nickname for his cello — came on the market.
It is a heady gift. It also commands a lot of responsibility.
“I’m still very excited every day when I open the cello case,” he says. “Every time you play you realize how much history surrounds the instrument. It’s just an incredible instrument.”
The cello is kept in a very “secure” place, he says. Nor does he ever travel alone with the instrument. “I try not to worry about security when I go to a concert or else I think it would make me go insane. When I’m playing it I treat it with care. ”
The sound is incredible, he says. “It is loud. You can get absolutely any colour you want. And there’s of course a richness to the tone. And the softest sounds, if you do them well, you can get them to the end of the hall.” It will be his for life, if he chooses. It means a lifetime of learning to play one of the greatest cellos ever made.
You’d think the Strad would be enough to draw interest to this concert. But having four cellists perform music together is also unusual. Add in the fact that the four are playing cellos that are a collective 1,000 years old, and this show is even more intriguing.
The other three musicians that are part of the Four Cello performance tell the stories of their instruments: