In 1972, the recording for German radio of Julius Klengel’s Hymnus, a rarity in the repertoire, brought together for the first time outside their common home twelve of the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – Klengel’s piece being designed for such an audience. The pleasure of these sessions gave the musicians assembled for the occasion the idea of meeting more regularly. Thus were born “the twelve cellists of Berlin”, officially constituted as an orchestra since 2002. As the works written for these very unusual forces were not abundant, the ensemble soon commissioned commissions, thus creating a beautiful imaginative momentum around it; its members also quickly composed, to measure, the most diverse arrangements – willingly going off the beaten track. Today, the programs of the twelve are infinitely varied, ranging from rewriting beloved pages of the repertoire – Fauré, Dvorak, Shostakovich – to film music, or anything else that falls under their skilful bows. Because one thing remains stable: the extraordinary quality, both technical and musical, of these artists, experienced in the practice of collective play and used to working with the greatest conductors.
Even if they play today, very literally, “of everything”, the instrumentalists were initially brought together to the sound of this singular Klengelian Hymnus, which it is good to listen to again sometimes, by rereading these lines, taken from Berlioz’s Grand treatise on instrumentation: “Nothing is more voluptuously melancholic and more likely to make the themes tender and languorous, than a mass of cellos […]”.
Oeuvres de / B. Blacher
/ D. Chostakovitch
/ A. Dvořak
/ G. Fauré
/ D. Ellington
/ A. Piazzolla
Ferme-Asile
Promenade des Pêcheurs 10
1950 Sion
Switzerland
