Cellist who plays to his emotions

On the night Jacqueline du Pre died, Lynn Harrell was scheduled to perform Elgar's Cello Concerto - a piece that in many ways du Pre had made her own - in London. Harrell, one of the leading cellists on today's concert circuit, dedicated the performance that evening to her memory. A gesture which one critic described as strange, 'because they don't play in the least bit the same'. 'But what is so strange to me is that in talking about it and discussing the phrasing and other technical details, we saw absolutely eye to eye yet we played it manifestly differently.' Given that they were playing the same instrument - a 1673 Stradivarius that du Pre invited Harrell to buy after multiple sclerosis made playing impossible - the difference is partly down to strength, 'but mostly irrepressible personality'. 'That is one of the things that makes music so wonderful. It is so individual,' said the softly spoken American, who counts Vladimir Ashkenazy, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman as his regular chamber music partners. Du Pre had two Stradivarius cellos. While Harrell bought the earlier one , Yoyo Ma has her 1712 Davidov. 'She used to say she preferred the sound of the early Strad, but it just required so much strength to play. Which is perfect for me, because I have that strength,' said Harrell, who is 1.9 metres tall. 'If I played the violin as I play the cello then I think I would break it.' Tonight he will be playing the Elgar concerto for the opening performance of the Hong Kong Philharmonic's autumn season. He has not counted how many times he has played the piece but it is certainly one of the most popular in the repertoire. 'I didn't even know it existed until 1966, which seems extraordinary now.' The piece got off to an uncertain start. It was premiered in 1919 by Felix Salmond, hated by the audience, and Salmond therefore refused to teach or play it. Only in the 1960s, when nostalgia for a pre-World War I English idyll became fashionable, did the concerto come into its own. 'It is about the disintegration of Edwardian upper class society, and about the terrible impact of the war.' When Harrell plays it, he hears echoes of the words of the World War I poets, and pictures a scene from Chariots of Fire when a young competitor is practising in the grounds of his country estate, and sets up champagne glasses on top of the hurdles. 'This epitomises to me the kind of fun-loving, upper-class young man in England that the first world war virtually wiped out.' The first movement, he said, draws out rural images of 'plaintive countryside, Malvern Hills'. Then comes a section which combines the vigour of battle with a deliberately old-fashioned Victorian graciousness, and finally with the slow movement is the time for mourning. If Harrell does not feel profoundly sad during the slow movement, then he knows he has played the work too often 'and I take it out of my repertoire for a year or so, so I can feel it again.' One composer with whose work Harrell is less comfortable is Dmitry Shostakovich, who had a traumatic relationship with the Soviet state. 'His background is so different from mine. Here I am, a blond, blue-eyed Texan boy growing up in the '50s, while he spent 15 years fearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night.' He can, he said, more easily understand the disillusionment of Beethoven, or Dvorak's tragic love affairs, or Lutoslawki's fear of a nuclear winter. Harrell began his music career in the Cleveland Orchestra under the late George Szell. 'My father died when I was 16 and my mother a year later and I didn't know what to do,' he said. His first teacher, Leonard Rose - a pupil of Salmond - believed in the training and discipline that orchestral performance can provide, and at 18, in 1962, Harrell took up a position in the third row of the cellos. Three years later he was made principal, and he stayed for another six years. James Levine - who came to Hong Kong last year with the Vienna Philharmonic - was conductor at Cleveland in the 1960s, and became a friend and - although he is only a few months older than Harrell - something of a mentor. 'Jimmy was a professional musician at a very young age: by 13 or 14 he already knew more about music than many adult musicians,' Harrell said. He recounted a favourite anecdote about how, when Levine was 11 his parents were looking for another violin teacher for him, and contacted Walter Levine (no relation). The older Levine first refused, saying he did not teach children, but accepted an invitation to dinner to meet the family. When Walter got there, Harrell said, his worst suspicions were confirmed when he saw James playing with a dolls' house. 'That's nice, Jimmy,' Walter said. 'What are you doing?' 'I'm staging the second act of Berg's Lulu,' was the answer. Naturally James got his new teacher, who later, through the chamber music ensembles that they performed in together, became Harrell's own. As for practice, Harrell still does it, of course, but not as much. 'I was shocked when I was younger to talk to Leonard Rose about this. I asked him how long it took to get a Schubert sonata or the Schumann concerto back into concert order, and he said about 20 minutes, half an hour. And I couldn't believe how this was possible. 'But now I can: you start playing the beginning of the piece, and something like the collective unconscious connects it together so you know how the piece unfolds, without having to go through the motions,' he said. 'Your body has gone through such a disciplined training in learning to play it that it clicks in. It comes from having known the pieces intimately for a long time.' Hong Kong Philharmonic Masters Series. Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Tonight and tomorrow, 8pm. $70-$250 Tel: 2734-9009