In review--Conversation with a Cello
Emmanuelle Bertrand Le violoncelle parle Harmonia Mundi Celebrated French cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand tackles challenging works by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), Catalan Gaspar Cassadò (1897-1966), her partner, pianist-composer Pascal Amoyel (1971), and Hungarian Zoltàn Kodály on her ambitious Le Violoncelle parle . While you can view the French cellist contorting her body and face performing this masterwork on the DVD portion of the album, she also contorts the concept of the language of music. On both the CD and DVD, she emphasizes the language of the cello itself. The back of the CD cover reads, “When music takes over the idioms characteristics of each culture, pushing back the limits of the instrumental technique, reshaping, and dismantling the rules to better express a specific identity…” The cultural identities the cello expresses here range from the hope and despair of Holocaust musician survivors (how music uplifted them), Hungarian and Russian folks...