
Christine Walevska: The Passion of Musical Communion
(Interview by Pierre-E. Barbier)
Being a Cellist and a Woman
Everything about this young, tall, and slender woman, an image of sincere integrity, is a subject of astonishment! For music lovers sensitive to the singing of the cello, it is enough to know that Christine Walevska’s style is built on an innate sense of improvisation, where expression takes precedence over technical demonstration—a striking quality in any work, known or unknown. This gives the score a new, spontaneous, lyrical character, where the nervous tension of the cello does not appear through the cold respect for the spirit of the score. The modern cello school is not without purism, often prioritizing technique to the detriment of sensitivity, having lost the memory of those "character" interpreters such as Casals, Feuermann, or Piatigorsky... With Walevska, minor works by Tchaikovsky, Glière, Martinů... find their true dimension, her cello becoming by turns a harp, a cymbalom... singing and human...
Female cellists who have reached the zenith of international soloists, known to all, are extremely rare: Raya Garbousova, and a few years ago, Zara Nelsova, Reine Flachot... and Jacqueline Du Pré, who, due to a relentless and painful illness, has retired from the international scene after asserting herself with the brilliance of a Pablo Casals.
At the mention of these names, which would make many others pale with jealousy, Christine Walevska only evokes common memories, the evenings spent with Rostropovich in Yugoslavia, with Starker... showing the admiration and friendship she holds for them. For Christine Walevska is not the prisoner of any chapel. She is always available, immediately accepting to play with and for those who love her for who she is. Her only aesthetic joy is to share it with others. Sensitive, easily bruised, she nonetheless remains conscious of her responsibility as an interpreter, a bridge between the music she loves to live and that she wants to make others love, for audiences as diverse as those at Town Hall in New York, the students of the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse, or the residents of the shantytowns of Lima. To all of them, she communicates an inner flame—natural, imbued with simplicity and enthusiasm.
For the Love of a Father...
PB: But how can you, in such a spirit of apostleship, lead a career that is as exhausting and artificial as that of meetings, planes, or concerts? For me, these are two moments where "the current doesn't pass," where it is a choice between worldliness or fatigue. How can you stay true to this generosity towards your father for whom you have been playing since forever?
CW: I only want to remember the positive moments, those where "the current passes," whether in friendly gatherings or concerts. Because I owe this generosity to my father, for whom I have been playing since and for always.
PB: Was your father a musician?
CW: Better than a musician! Because my education and my joy of living come from him. I hold for him a true veneration. Yes, I even left my hotel in Munich, when my mother called me to say he had gone blind one night in November 1966. I took the first plane for Los Angeles and left the stage immediately. I stayed by his side, forgetting already three years of an essentially German career. During those difficult years, he had promised to come to Germany to support me, to come see me after every concert, the truth. And above all, I would have known for whom I was playing, and for what reason I was so far from my own, imposing myself upon musicians, conductors, and audiences whose reflexes, joys, and worries I did not yet discern.
Today, nearly ten years after his death, I am doing nothing but keeping the promise I made to my father: "to play with all my passion so that I am capable of making people love the music I love, making an audience vibrate to pull them out of their ugliness, their weaknesses, their lack of love."
PB: With such a passion for the beautiful and the true, how did you impose yourself on your masters, first of all, and then on your audience?
CW: Yes, it is a perpetual search for confidence, not naive or primary, but a deep, shared, lived knowledge of a message that one transmits.
PB: And your training? Gregor Piatigorsky didn’t say that he found himself in you, taking you in as a student, a very rare occurrence in the career of the great musician who has just passed away?
CW: Yes, my training, I owe it to my father, to Piatigorsky, who revealed to me other things by insisting on our common, Russo-American traditions. It was he who sent me to the Conservatoire de Paris, to Maurice Maréchal’s class.
...And a Certain Tenderness for France
PB: Wasn’t it Maréchal who said to you, after your competition prize: "Christine, forget everything I’ve told you; if, in Beethoven's sonata, you suddenly feel like playing like... do what seems right to you at the moment!" I believe such advice was not only rare but incredible coming from Maréchal, a rigorous man for whom Beethoven was a God!
CW: Yes, I owe it to Maurice Maréchal for having learned the technique of the French school after the cello school, incomparable since Duport! I have effectively contracted a debt toward France that I would like to repay in my own way. Yes, my father wrote to General de Gaulle to thank France for the free education I had received. Your President replied with a handwritten letter. How do you think I could thank your country, which is a bit mine too? I am so happy every time I can play and stay here.
PB: The French school of cello is still as vibrant, and the musical and pedagogical testament of Maurice Maréchal continues...
CW: Do you believe that one day the Paris Conservatoire would call upon my services, allowing me, in an obviously free capacity, to return what your country taught me?
PB: I hope such a wish will be granted, but I am sure, by the way, that our young virtuosos to come would be largely your debtors!
Unstructured Music
PB: But what are your projects?
CW: I have just recorded for Phonogram the Vivaldi Concertos with Kurt Redel. I was able, with this great flutist and German conductor, to restore the accentuation, the style of ornamentation proper to this magnificent Baroque music, stripping away, I hope, the traces left by the catastrophic 19th century on its scores and its particular rhythm. I am also planning to record an album of "encores," of encores for you, where I could pay tribute to Piatigorsky and introduce parts of Boldonini, including the six South American pieces, sublimely for the cello, and the vivacity of an authentic folklore, but where the inventions of a Kodály or a Stravinsky are also present.
PB: Through your temperament itself, does today’s music limit your thirst for sensitive, immediate communication?
CW: I admit that I want to deeply understand what I play. That’s why I don’t play the literature of the 20th century, other than Prokofiev, Khachaturian... and Martinů, whose planes often fly far from our recent encounters. The technique I use makes me focus on the modern school, illustrated by masters of the class of János Starker or Siegfried Palm. Every time you listen to an interpreter for the second time, I know who is playing. But when you hear the Ysang Yun Concerto, can the interpreter feel immediately concerned, forced to impose a work where the message is more for the mind than for the senses?
PB: I believe nonetheless that there are first-rate performers who are dedicated to contemporary music. Siegfried Palm plays the role of a catalyst: he has provoked the creation of works that composers of today would not have dared or succeeded in if Palm had not been there to assure them they would be played. I persist in believing that a work like the Haffter Concerto would take on a new dimension under your bow!
CW: Perhaps! Mais, for the moment, I would like to play the Martinů Concertino.
PB: Will you make a career in sonatas, with a pianist like Claudio Arrau, who writes with all the admiration he has for you?
CW: I give recitals with piano, like the one you heard in Prague in May 1974. In America, I call upon an immense musician, based in Venezuela, Martín Imaz, with whom I get along spontaneously. During a tour in Japan, I saw tears streaming down Imaz’s face, so much was he moved by the music. If I were to play in Paris, I know many pianist friends who would allow me to produce myself. Music in the chamber is not lacking for me, but I love it just as much for the interest I take in playing with others as for its audience, which is often more restricted.
PB: In conclusion, does this passionate solo career allow you to keep your enthusiasm?
CW: Yes, if I had the impression of being understood, even if the sometimes artificial character of musical life does not tarnish an exciting profession, when you have the impression that you have brought something! At the moment, I am anxious, worried... I had to change cellos; the Carlo Bergonzi you heard in Haydn, Schumann, and Saint-Saëns was stolen from my New York apartment, as well as all my father's bows, except one, which by chance bore the stamp of Napoleon I...
PB: Does this tension inhabit you every time you go to give a concert?
CW: Yes, but it's part of my profession.
Christine Walevska, a female cellist with a temperament both generous and mystical facing the realism of today's world, returns to her new instrument.
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