When cellist Michael Samis was approached by Delos Records
to make his debut recording, he could not have guessed where the path would lead him.
“They wanted something that hadn’t been recorded, ideally, at all,” said Samis, by phone from his home in Nashville, where he is a member of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. “Ideally, that would be something from the romantic era, because that is the voice most suited to my playing.” Samis, who is also principal cellist of the Grammy-nominated Gateway Chamber Orchestra in Clarksville, Tennessee, also wanted something for cello and chamber orchestra. “I had spoken with the conductor (Gregory Wolynec) about a collaboration, so it was perfect timing.”
Finding that “ideal” work would not be easy. “Although they’re finding more and more things that just got run over because there was so much musical output at the time, it’s hard to stumble across something that’s both good and obscure.”
“So how in the world am I going to do this?” he thought. Samis went online, searching through "forums, blogs and whatnot."
"I ran across this really neat forum called ‘Unsung Composers.’ Basically, it’s a forum dedicated to lost, obscure music from the romantic era. I searched through that and there was a forum about cello concertos (“Unsung Cello Concertos”). Someone had posted that there really needs to be a top notch recording of the (Carl) Reinecke Cello Concerto. I had never heard of it.”
Taking his cue from that, Samis went to the online music library, International Music Score Library Project. He found Reinecke’s 1864 Concerto there, but only in a piano reduction. There were no parts for orchestra.
Now what?
Samis downloaded the score and looked it over.
“I went to my studio and played a couple of themes, particularly the opening theme, which had a haunting, folksy, singing quality, with a little bit of harmonic minor in the middle (a minor scale with a raised seventh degree). There was something about it that really spoke to me.” (Samis performs the opening of the Concerto with the Gateway Chamber Orchestra at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelsamis/a-forgotten-cello-concerto.)
Samis’ research found that a non-professional orchestra in Europe had recorded it at one time, but he could not find the actual recording. “I tried and tried to find it, but I just couldn’t. I guess it’s out of print or something.” Samis learned the Concerto by studying the solo part from the piano reduction score.
However, that was the least of his problems. “The orchestra score can be purchased from Germany, but here’s the kicker: there were no orchestra parts. We ordered the score from Schott, and they said they would have to re-print them.”
Enter Wilson Ochoa, producer of Samis’ album for Delos and librarian of the Nashville Symphony. “He actually found a copy of the score with a set of parts in a library in Philadelphia. Well, it turns out those parts were in such decrepit shape that they were unusable. We had to have Schott reprint them, which took so much time that we didn’t actually get them until about ten days before the performance.”
Samis performed the Reinecke Concerto with the Gateway
Chamber Orchestra Feb. 11 at the George and Sharon Mabry Concert Hall in
Clarksville. “That concert was, as far as we know, since we can’t find any
evidence to the contrary, the U.S. premiere," he said.
Waiting for the parts to arrive from Schott was “a nail-biter,” said Samis, because Ochoa had to proof them (check them for errors) before the concert. “He had to spend the whole Super Bowl weekend and cancel his party to go through these obscure parts so we would play it at the concert."
And still there were obstacles to overcome. The Thursday before the concert, two members of Gateway’s first violin section fell ill and could not perform (there are five first violins in the Gateway CO).
As it happens, Samis’ mother is Sylvia Samis, first violinist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Sylvia and Michael had discussed the possibility of her playing in the Gateway CO for the Feb. 11 concert, “but I had pretty much decided that I would rather be in the audience as a spectator and be able to enjoy the whole experience from that standpoint,” she said. She contacted violinists she knew to help find substitutes for the orchestra. “We gave it another day, then I checked in with Michael and he said, ‘We can’t find anybody. Could you please play?’ So, of course, I said yes.”
Sylvia got the music via e-mail and left "very early Sunday morning” (Feb. 10) for Clarksville. She got there “just five minutes before the rehearsal started, but it was fine.” The rehearsals were from 12 to 6 on Sunday, with a sound check Monday morning.
“What was amazing to me was how wonderful it felt to be performing on the stage with him as a soloist. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to have that feeling. It was hard for me to hold the tears back.”
The Reinecke Concerto “is very romantic and soulful,” said Sylvia. “The slow movement is really gorgeous. It’s heart-rending. There are beautiful melodies, and the orchestration is really well done. Technically, it’s a bear for the cello, which might have something to do with its being dismissed.” (Reinecke composed it for 19th-century cello virtuoso Friedrich Grützmacher.)
In her review of the concert, Karen Parr-Moody of Clarksville’s Leaf-Chronicle called Samis “a remarkable presence," adding that “he matched his instrument’s beauty with the dark looks and intense emotion of a silent movie actor.”
Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was a prolific composer with over
200 numbered works. The Cello Concerto is Op. 82. He was also a noted pianist
(he wrote four piano concertos) and conductor of the famed Gewandhaus Orchestra
in Leipzig. He taught at the Leipzig Conservatory for many years. Among his
students were Edvard Grieg,
Leoš
Janáček, Isaac Albéniz, Charles Villiers
Stanford, Johan Svendsen and Max Bruch.
Compared to well known composers, “I would put him closest to Mendelssohn,” said (Michael) Samis. “Mendelssohn and Schumann were his teachers, and to me, his Concerto is almost like the Mendelssohn cello concerto that never happened. Not that it doesn’t have its own voice, but it starts very similarly, with timpani and strings for two bars, then the solo cello enters.”
Recording sessions for Samis’ Delos album will be June 17 and 18 in Mabry Hall in Clarksville, which is highly regarded for its acoustics. The theme of the album is “connections to the past,” said Samis. In addition to the Reinecke, it will include the Adagio and Allegro (1849) by Schumann in a never-recorded setting for cello and orchestra by Ernest Ansermet. There will be a pair of elegiac works, “Threnos” (1990) by John Tavener for solo cello and Osvaldo Golijov’s “Mariel” (1999) for cello and marimba, both written in remembrance of close friends. Joining Samis in the Golijov will be percussionist Eric Willie. Also on the album will be the Cello Suite No. 1 (1956) for unaccompanied cello by Ernest Bloch, which looks back to the suites by J. S. Bach.
Release is tentatively set for early 2014.