ALWAYS THE BEST OF FRIENDS

Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández talks to Peter Quantrill about making a joint album of Brahms and Clara Schumann with superstar violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and the challenges of recording it both live and in the studio

The Deutsche Grammophon LP cover of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s first recording of the Brahms ‘Double’ Concerto, issued in 1983, tells a story of its own. There she is, not yet 20 years old, perhaps mid-banter with the 20-something Antonio Meneses. Between them, smaller and evidently frail, the ghost of a mordant smile playing across his lips, the figure of Herbert von Karajan occupies a kind of negative space.

Almost 40 years on, the amiability is replaced by warm rapport between Mutter and the cellist Pablo Ferrández on the cover of their new Sony recording. Appropriately so, when the pair have a history with the piece that goes beyond contractual requirements and rehearse– record schedules. ‘I first played the Brahms with Anne-Sophie in 2017,’ recalls Ferrández, ‘and she very casually said that we should record it one day. So I said, “Sure…” Next time we played it, she mentioned it again and asked me which orchestra we should record it with. Then she said that she knew the ideal partners: the Czech Philharmonic and Manfred Honeck.’

A one-time student of Natalia Shakhovskaya at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in his home city of Madrid, Ferrández began playing with the violinist in 2014 after winning a scholarship from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation and touring with her as a member of the Mutter Virtuosi. Although he has made several albums since then, he was understandably apprehensive about the prospect of recording live.

PERFORMANCE PHOTOS PETRA HAJSKA © SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

‘IN THE DOUBLE CONCERTO WE WANTED TO AVOID A MUSICAL BATTLE. WE ENJOY PLAYING SOFTLY TOGETHER’ – PABLO FERRÁNDEZ, CELLO

Three concerts were scheduled in Prague, in January this year. ‘I was praying so hard that they wouldn’t be cancelled because of Covid,’ says Ferrández, ‘though that did happen in the city the following week. I had so many questions beforehand: anything can happen in the concert, we have such a huge orchestra. How are we going to edit if we need to? If I don’t like something, will there be a possibility of changing it?’

Beyond practice, how did he deal with these anxieties? ‘I spent a lot of time in advance visualising myself on stage,’ he replies. ‘When I got there, I just tried to enjoy myself. Each performance was slightly different in character. The second time in particular, I was still very concerned not to mess it up. And it’s not an easy piece. If someone next to you messes up, it’s hard not to be distracted. I remember that when we played it together in 2018 – the second time we did it – Iwas crazy stressed out about it. But the years have passed and now I feel confident on stage with her.’

His preparation extended to listening to Mutter’s previous recordings, in order to get the depth of her Brahms sound into his head and under his fingers. ‘Something we wanted to avoid in the concerto was the kind of musical battle where the two soloists seem to be engaged in a shouting match – the kind of Brahms “Double” that is easy to fall into. We wanted to do the opposite. We enjoy playing softly together. The voicing of the two soloists is so interwoven in the concerto, and we worked on this a lot.’

Brahms composed the work in 1887 as a kind of olive branch extended towards Joseph Joachim, as the two friends had been estranged for three years, but he also wrote it specifically with the cellist Robert Haussman in mind. There is a lot of friendly competition between the violin and cello, as Ferrández observes: ‘They are not always the best of friends. In the second movement, the violin is saying something sweet, and the cello puts his foot down! But this friendly competition is one thing; there is also a side to the concerto where both instruments are talking the same language, they are hand in hand and speaking lovingly.’ A film on Ferrández’s YouTube channel is a gold mine of practical insights for the meeting point of technique, musicianship and practice strategy in this work.

After decades of recording and re-recording the canonic repertoire, as well as a good deal of music written for her, Mutter has evolved a studio-recording method that Ferrández finds artistically congenial. ‘She doesn’t come in with a set idea. She records according to different moods. For one take, she will say that she wants a movement to be very forward-moving or extrovert. Then she will want to do it in a contrasting way. She doesn’t want to be stuck with a single interpretation, and that seems like a great idea to me.

‘When I made my first solo recording for Sony,’ remembers Ferrández, ‘I came in with fixed ideas, and that’s much tougher, because you want to get a single idea perfect, and you become obsessed with tiny details that don’t matter. When you do it her way, you can be more flexible at the editing stage as well as in the studio. As long as it’s convincing in the end, everything is possible.’

According to Ferrández, the coupling of Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio was Mutter’s idea. They prepared it with intensive rehearsal sessions, and then a concert, before taking it into a Munich studio a few months before going to Prague for the ‘Double’ Concerto. ‘Our reading of the trio developed quickly,’ recalls the cellist. ‘The first rehearsal was quite tough, because we found so many possibilities. You can only play one of them on the recording, and I didn’t have the experience to know which one. Our approach went from really free to more conservative before we landed somewhere in the middle. The recording was incredibly easy in the end: it took a morning. We played it through a few times and that was that.’

Producer Bernhard Güttler, pianist Lambert Orkis, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and cellist Pablo Ferrández at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich

The two string players, along with Mutter’s regular recital partner Lambert Orkis, approached the trio as though it was already part of the canon. ‘Perhaps before now it hasn’t been taken quite so seriously. It has been played in pretty, intimate ways. You can hear a lot of Mendelssohn in her phrasing – the turbulent textures of the D minor Trio – as well as her husband’s style.’

What about playing for the microphone, as distinct from playing for an audience? ‘They’re very different,’ agrees Ferrández. ‘I was wondering in advance about that myself. What will I focus on? Since we aren’t playing for an audience, we won’t have to force the sound, and all the tricky balance issues can be sorted out in the edit. But Anne-Sophie said, “Don’t play for the microphone. Play as it feels right for that room.” That was a great tip.’

The album sets up another artistic duel of sorts, between Ferrández’s two cellos. He recorded the Brahms with the ‘Lord Aylesford’ Stradivari of 1696, which he has been playing for a decade. He finds it an uncanny match with Mutter’s ‘Lord Dunn-Raven’ Stradivari of 1710: ‘They are super similar in tone and the way they’re played. They are like twins.’ For Schumann’s trio, however, he was able to use a second Stradivari, the 1689 ‘Archinto’. Ferrández had only begun playing the instrument a month beforehand, ‘but I immediately fell in love with it, and I wanted it to be on the album. I wonder if people will notice the difference between the two cellos!’

WORKS Brahms Concerto in A minor for violin and cello op.102; C. SchumannPiano Trio in G minor 1ARTISTS Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

Pablo Ferrández (cello) Lambert Orkis (piano) 1 Czech Philharmonic/Manfred Honeck RECORDING VENUES Dvořák Hall, Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic; Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich, Germany 1