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On July 7, 2003, Boston Symphony cellist Luis
Leguia gave the opening recital of Stockbridge Summer Music’s 18th
season at the Seven Hills Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts.
The program featured standard works from the cello repertoire by Bach
(Suite No. 3), Vivaldi (Sonata No. 5), Faure (Elegie), and Kodaly (Solo Sonata).
What was more unusual was the instrument on which Leguia performed:
a carbon fiber cello of his own invention.
In recent years the Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello, named after Leguia and his associate, Mr. Clark, has
attracted attention through concerts and recordings by Leguia and other
professional cellists. Several
members of the BSO cello section own these instruments and even play them in the
orchestra. Notable musicians have
endorsed their use, and they are widely advertised in major music periodicals. So
when I took a group of students from the Killington Music Festival (KMF)
in Vermont down to Lenox to hear Leguia’s recital, we were all asking the same
fundamental question: what does a carbon fiber cello actually sound
like?
The answer intrigued some, disappointed others.
For the Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello sounds like…a cello.
It even has a subtle wolf tone where cellists expect to find one. The basic set-up is the same, with a normal cello bridge and
tuning pegs. It is played with a
normal cello bow.
From the first phrases of the Bach, it was clear that
Leguia is fascinated by the ability of his invention to project easily and to
respond to variations in bow pressure and speed for a variety of timbres. A
consummate cellist who has performed in important venues all over the world and
is now in his fortieth season with the BSO, Leguia gave highly personal
interpretations from memory of the Bach Suite, which he studied with Casals in
Prades, and the Kodaly Solo Sonata, a work he played for the composer in the
1960’s. His ongoing commitment to
works by American composers (Walter Piston composed his Duo for Leguia) was
reflected in the fifth work on the program, a sonata by the 18th
century English-American composer, Raynor Taylor.
The most obvious differences between Leguia’s carbon
fiber cello and its wooden counterparts are in design.
A marked improvement is the Luis and Clark’s streamlined shape, which
makes the instrument more comfortable to play by eliminating the jutting corners
at the C-bouts. It is also much lighter than a conventional cello, and
because it is made from a mold, there are no seams to worry about.
During the intermission, Leguia was delighted to learn
of the group of string players, mostly cellists, in the audience and invited us
to try his cello after the performance. He
also discovered that he and I have something else in common: we (alone, it would
seem) have performed Charles Martin Loeffler’s Poeme for cello, he at the
Library of Congress in the 1980’s, and I at the Apollonia Spring Festival in
Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002. “I
thought I was the only one who had played that piece,” quipped Luis.
“You were, until I did it!” I replied.
In contrast with conventional string instruments, so
notoriously susceptible to being cracked or crushed (ask the 13-year old KMF
violinist, a Juilliard pre-college student who accidentally sat on her valuable
19th century instrument this year), the Luis and Clark cello is
practically indestructible. Further,
as Luis’s 13-year old daughter Caroline reports, it is virtually impervious to
the elements: “We tied it to the roof of a car for two weeks and drove around
with it. Nothing happened to it.”
After the concert, we were captivated by Luis’s warmth and jovial humor. He
inspired us with stories about his musical experiences, which he shared as we
subjected his cello to various benign experiments.
(Nobody seemed anxious to test its unbreakability.)
“Hey, you sound great,” Luis would interject, interrupting himself in
mid-sentence to encourage a student. Japanese
cellist Aeka Watanabe, a master’s degree candidate at the San Francisco
Conservatory, tried the lyrical second theme from the Dvorak Concerto, first
movement. Chris Miller, a senior at
the University of South Carolina, dug into the chords of the Canto from
Britten’s first solo suite. And
Lionel Thomas, a violin major at the University of Oregon, made his cello debut
with a memorable rendition of the opening of the Saint-Saens concerto. Violist Emilee Newell from St. Louis soon followed suit as
Aleida Gehrels (violist, University of Arizona) and Brightin Schlumpf
(violinist, Cornell University), looked on in amused disbelief.
Emilee earned the honor of holding the cello for a group photo session
later on, and bought a huge bag of pretzels to celebrate on the trip back to
Killington.
The
return trip north was a bit longer than planned, providing new lessons in the
value of map- and sign-reading, as well as some idyllic scenery as we wound our
way through the hills, forests, and villages of south-central Vermont (we saw
more deer than cars along the way). But
despite the hours on the road, this had been a unique adventure, and Luis
Leguia’s performance, personality, and his musical invention have proven to be
the stuff of enduring recollections for all involved.
Geoffrey Dean
August 28, 2003
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