‘Our mission is to get that one-to-one connection’

With a string of competition wins to his name and debuts with major orchestras in 2024, Zlatomir Fung is a young cellist to watch. Amanda Holloway speaks to him about what inspires him and keeps him grounded

MARCO BORGGREVE

Zlatomir Fung is a name to be reckoned with. This American cellist of Chinese and Bulgarian heritage is a mesmerising presence on the concert stage – technically superb with a warm tone and emotional depth that suggest years of experience, though he’s just 24. He’s already familiar to US and UK audiences and is broadening his reach with every new debut, from Tenerife to Taiwan.

It’s four years since he won the cello section of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in St Petersburg, the youngest ever cellist winner and the first American cellist to win in four decades. In that time he’s weathered the Covid lockdowns (a frustrating experience for a goal-oriented young man at the start of his career) and started the slow work of introducing himself to orchestras in the US and Europe, increasing his recital work and allowing time for other projects – of which he has many. When we finish talking he’s going into the studio to record an hour-long children’s drama with a Christmas theme featuring cello-playing elves, which he devised for New York’s classical radio station WQXR as part of its Artist Propulsion Lab. Fung, who has an attractively low-pitched speaking voice, says he’s not much of an actor but he may allow himself a cameo. He will, of course, be playing the cello part, along with cellist, actor and film-maker Nicholas Canellakis.

With his mop of black hair, bookish spectacles and open, friendly face, Fung is a kind of Harry Potter with a cello and bow, rather than a magic wand. It’s no surprise to hear that he is a chess fanatic who toyed with giving up the cello at 15 to take chess more seriously (‘I did find a way to practise scales while playing online chess. But it wasn’t ideal!’). Fung is also an aspiring screenwriter and cinephile who won a place to study film at New York University but opted for the Juilliard School instead. We should be glad he chose to concentrate on the cello when so many other options beckoned.

Fung made his recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2021 and was described by one reviewer as ‘one of those rare musicians with a Midas touch: he quickly envelops every score he plays in an almost palpable golden aura.’ Other recent highlights include returns to Wigmore Hall, London, and appearances at the Verbier, Dresden and Aspen music festivals. Fung is currently artist-in-residence with the

UK’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, for which he opened the 2023–4 season with the Elgar Cello Concerto at Cadogan Hall in London, catching the mood expertly, according to the Arts Desk reviewer: ‘Fung’s greatest revelation was to make what often sounds as dark treading water […] truly anguished, as if Elgar can’t pull himself out of his slough of despond.’ RPO managing director James Williams tells me he was delighted by this reception, but not surprised: ‘His playing is immediately communicative and there’s a finesse, but there’s also a body to his sound. And of course he’s got a phenomenal technique; he’s one of those musicians that just makes everything look effortless.’ Audiences are drawn in to Fung’s performance, whether it’s Elgar, Bach or Berio. ‘He’s the sort of musician who can turn up and play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and you’d still think it was the greatest piece of music ever!’ says Williams. Fung returns to the orchestra in February 2024 to play Haydn’s Cello Concerto no.1 in London, Hull, Warwick and Northampton, and in May he’ll be playing Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto in the newly reopened Bristol Beacon.

Also in February, Fung joins the BBC Philharmonic to play the UK premiere in Manchester of Katherine Balch’s Whisper Concerto (see April 2023’s Premiere of the Month), a co-commission between the BBC and orchestras in Dallas and Darmstadt which tests both Fung and his cello to the limit. ‘We worked closely on fine-tuning all the extended techniques both before and during her writing process, in long sessions over Zoom and in person, for a period of several months,’ he tells me. ‘She had a lot of ideas about techniques and sounds that didn’t have a standard method of notation, so we worked on how precisely to execute and notate the sounds that she was hearing.’ The score requires Fung to scratch, beat and scrape the strings in a visually arresting performance. ‘One of the biggest effects is the white noise sound, which I make by moving the bow really rapidly and creating friction, not pitch,’ he says. ‘Katherine wanted to create a sense of vain struggle, and the audience can see there is an intense emotional thing happening, but it’s just not coming through.’ Although the name Whisper Concerto derives from the ‘whisper cadenza’ in Ligeti’s Cello Concerto, ‘At the end of the second movement, there’s a cadenza for cello and chopstick,’ says Fung. ‘So I think the piece will end up being informally known as the Chopstick Concerto!’

‘ZLATOMIR’S PLAYING IS IMMEDIATELY COMMUNICATIVE AND THERE’S A FINESSE, BUT THERE’S ALSO A BODY TO HIS SOUND’

Between now and May 2024 Fung has debuts with more American orchestras, in Sacramento, Rhode Island, Sarasota and Baltimore. Williams is amazed at the amount Fung has managed to achieve in a few short years. ‘But he has been very careful in how he progresses, thinking carefully about what those next musical steps are for him and how he develops himself as a musician.’ Another plus is Fung’s willingness to get involved in the outreach work of the orchestra. ‘It’s good to see his commitment to community and education work running in parallel with his career, not as some sort of add-on,’ says Williams. They are planning projects for early summer 2024, which may involve working in Brent or the Tri-Borough Music Hub, both in London.

MARCO BORGGREVE

‘I LOVE THE WAY YO-YO MA PUTS IT; HE SAYS IT’S REALLY ABOUT ONE PERSON, EVEN IF YOU’RE PLAYING FOR TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE’

Fung welcomes the chance to get out of the concert hall and into the community, whether it’s working with secondary school orchestras or preschool classes. ‘In 2018, I organised a kids’ concert targeted at six- to seven-year-olds who’d just started doing Suzuki,’ he says. ‘It’s really rewarding, especially with younger children because it puts everything into perspective. For them there’s no such thing as a missed shift; all they care about is whether it’s interesting or not.’ With such a broad cultural background, does Fung ever see himself as an ambassador for diversity? It sounds as if he is still working out his relationships with audiences and the music business. ‘Part of the struggle I personally have with the idea of promoting myself is that what we do as musicians is such a personal thing, aesthetically. I love the way Yo-Yo Ma puts it; he says it’s really about one person, even if you’re playing for two thousand people. In that moment it’s just about you and someone else who’s hearing you. Our mission is to get that one-to-one connection; everything we do in promoting ourselves is to get to that. It’s not about us.’

When Fung is working with young cellists, does he think back to the advice given by any particular tutor? ‘When we practise we have our own internal teacher, which is like the amalgamation of all the ones we’ve had. The person who made me a cellist was Richard Aaron, with whom I worked in high school and later at Juilliard. He really made me appreciate the craft of cello playing; not only what you’re trying to say, but the way that you say it.’

Fung started learning the cello aged three, in Corvallis, Oregon, with a Suzuki-method teacher called Ann Grabe, who was (and still is) principal cellist of the Oregon Mozart Players and a cellist in the Eugene Symphony. ‘In the first year I barely picked up the cello. In the Suzuki method, for your first performance you just get up on stage and take a bow. I guess it’s about being comfortable in front of the audience. I still struggle with that sometimes: how I should walk when I come out on stage!’ He studied with Grabe from 2002 to 2008, before his family moved to Massachusetts. His parents (his mother is a maths professor, his father a software engineer) encouraged their children to learn an instrument, but they weren’t musicians themselves. Nor did Fung inherit their maths skills, although he does have an analytical streak. ‘For me it was always the humanities: music, theatre and cinema. But sometimes my analytical thinking, which is part of my gene pool, has been an asset to me. I tend to think of my cello playing in a very segmented, analytical way.’ Turning off that part of his brain during a performance proves to be the challenge. ‘You gently have to suppress that overly analytical, controlling part of your mind and let the more inspirational free-flowing part come to the foreground. That leap is hard for me, but I’m working on it!’

Fung plays Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no.1 with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Raiskin

SIMEON RUSNAK

‘YOU HAVE TO SUPPRESS THAT OVERLY ANALYTICAL PART OF YOUR MIND AND LET THE MORE FREE-FLOWING PART COME TO THE FOREGROUND’

When the Fung family moved to the Boston area, he attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory School programme. While other twelve-year-olds were playing video games, Fung was watching the live stream of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition’s cello rounds. It became a ritual to watch the archived performances again while he ate breakfast. The internet has been his friend – Fung studied over Skype with Aaron throughout his teenage years and continued to work with him in person when he joined Juilliard as an undergraduate.

At just 13 he flew to Montreux, Switzerland, to perform in the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, his first international contest. In spite of a fluff in his first piece he won second prize, and from then on he was a competition regular. He won top prizes at the 2015 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players (Washington DC), the 2016 George Enescu International Competition (Bucharest) and the 2018 Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld International String Competition (Harbin, China).

His success in the 2017 Young Concert Artists auditions came with a series of recitals, in which he had the chance to hone lots of repertoire. His dream of entering the Tchaikovsky Competition was fulfilled in June 2019 when he travelled to St Petersburg to play in programmes that included old favourites (Tchaikovsky, Brahms) as well as music by Carter and the quirky, rhythmic Berio Sequenza XIV. In the final round, he gave astonishingly assured performances of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no.2. ‘The Tchaikovsky Competition was the highest pressure because it was live-streamed on Medici TV, but it was also a source of joy because my friends could tune in and I felt them cheering me on.’ Continuing his winning streak, the following year he was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant and became a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship recipient in 2022.

For some musicians, competitions are a living nightmare, but Fung seemed to breeze through them. Why was he so successful? ‘In that period of my life when I was doing a lot of competitions I wanted to push myself to learn the repertoire and have the opportunity to perform. I was always looking for the next one to do. It felt like a goal – and I’m a very goal-oriented person. As for my relative success in them, I was lucky, in a way. Perhaps one could describe my playing as diplomatic, as one could also describe my personality! Maybe that benefited me in competitions, which are about getting a consensus among people with very different musical tastes. But also I do think it was a matter of experience: that helped me have more control over my nerves.’

His piano partner for the Tchaikovsky Competition was the Romanian Iulian Ochescu, who had played with him in the George Enescu Competition in 2016. When we spoke, Fung was about to record his debut album with Ochescu for the Signum label. It’s a programme of works for cello and piano based on or inspired by opera, which Fung has been planning for a while, and for which he has actually commissioned a work, as well as written his own arrangements. ‘The commission is a Carmen fantasy (Fantasia Carmèn) from my friend Marshall Estrin. There are three heavy-hitting Carmen fantasies for violinists, but the few for cellists are not really played or they are not especially distinguished. I’ve also just finished my own arrangement of a fantasy on Janáček’s Jenůfa. The rest of the album is 19thcentury works based on operas – one of the Beethoven variation sets on Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Servais’s variations on Donizetti’s La fille du regiment.’ It sounds delicious, but we will have to wait for the release in autumn 2024.

FUNG’S INSTRUMENT AND BOW

MARCO BORGGREVE

Fung plays a 1717 cello by David Tecchler of Rome, loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous benefactor.

‘I have enjoyed this cello a lot; the sound is very round and very expansive and it really projects through so there’s a lot of room with it to play around with dynamics. I find it’s very open to being handled. Some cellos push back when you try to give it a little “oomph”, but this is like, “yeah, bring it on!”’ says Fung. Born in Germany, Tecchler worked in Rome in the early 18th century, and his cellos and basses are highly regarded. Many eminent cellists, including Beatrice Harrison, Emanuel Feuermann and, more recently, Robert Cohen, have played one of his instruments at some point. The previous owner of Fung’s cello was English musician William Roskelly (1919–2017) –a student of Pablo Casals who played in the London Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Since Roskelly’s death, Fung is the first cellist to have been loaned the Tecchler.

Fung has two main bows: a ‘self-rehairing’ Dominique Peccatte, which has some damage at the tip and an unoriginal frog and button: ‘It’s kind of a player’s bow, which is not in the best condition!’ says Fung. The other is an early Jean Pierre Marie Persoit, a very different bow in its character. ‘The Peccatte has more overtones and a lighter, more elegant sound, whereas the Persoit is more robust and muscular.

They complement each other.’