Alexander Melnikov - Jean-Guihen Queyras
The last Beethoven and the young Rachmaninov
(FIMPC 2025 – V)
Tuesday
July, 15
Fifth Concert
Pau Casals Auditorium
Jean-Guihen Queyras - Alexander Melnikov
Pau Casals Internactional Music Festival
Concert Review
Sometimes we need a few words to express the experience of listening to a concert that allows you to feel that nothing bad exists in the world, in that moment, only the music, only a perfect and balanced space and time. This was one of those moments.
The concert was vibrant, the performance brilliant, and the feeling of experiencing ethereal moments was especially enhanced by the ideal pianissimos.
Concert Program
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)
Sonata for Piano and Cello in C Major, Op. 10 No. 1
Sonata for Piano and Cello in D Major, Op. 102 No. 2
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873 - 1943)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19
Encores:Debussy and Chopin
The performers
Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
Alexander Melnikov, piano
Jean-Guihen Queyras y Alexander Melnikov
Ludwig van Beethoven
Variaciones Judas Macabeu de
Cello Biennale Amsterdam, 2015
Compartido en YouTube - 17 de marzo de 2015
Jean-Guihen Queyras
[Jean-Guihen – Queyras], is characterized by insatiable curiosity,
diversity and a firm focus on the music itself.
Interlude
Jean-Guihen Queyras (1967) was born in Montreal (Canada). He studied with Claire Rabier and Reine Flachot (1922 - 1998) and later at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de danse de Lyon.
In addition, he studied chamber music with Alain Meunier (1942) and later with Christoph Henkol (1946) and Tim Eddy [1] who was a student of Bernard Greenhouse (1916-2011), who in turn was a student of Pau Casals.
[1]Tim Eddy won the Gaspar Cassado International Cello Prize in Florence, Italy, in 1975, receiving the highest distinction. He also performed several times at the Marlboro Festival. In addition, he attended masterclasses with Pablo Casals. Eddy comments on Casals:
Casals’ playing was built around speaking with the cello, and speaking with the greatest candor from a gut level. He was more interested in soulful playing than in prettiness, though there was incredible refinement and finesse in his own playing. His playing was so gutsy, direct, and simple that when I watched him play my reaction was “How could it be done any other way?” His technical means fit the musical end perfectly.
From: Conversation with Timothy Eddy (July, 2001) .
Queyras maintained a long collaboration with Pierre Boulez (1925 - 2016), especially as a soloist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain a group created and directed by Boulez.
Critics say that Queyras is an eclectic musician. He has collaborated with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and also with the Akademie fur Alte Musik in Berlin. He has performed music ranging from Baroque to contemporary. For example, he premiered works by Ivan Fedele (1953), Gilbert Amy (1936), Bruno Mantovani (1974), Michael Jarrell (1958), Johannes Maria Staud (1974), Thomas Larcher (1963), Tristan Murail (1947) or Péter Eötvös (1944 – 2024).
He is a founding member of the Arcanto Quartett and is part of the Faust-Queyras-Melnikov Trio; with violinist Isabelle Faust (1972) and pianist Aleksandr Melnikov (1973).
Queyras has performed as a soloist with the Danish National Orchestra, the Paris Chamber Orchestra, and the Mozarteum Orchestra, among others. He has performed in Taipei (Taiwan), New York, Buenos Aires, London, Riga, and Prague, to name just a few.
Jean-Guihen Queyras
Freiburger Barockorchester
Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Robert Schumann
Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129
DW Classical Music
Shared on YouTube -October 3, 2020
Jean-Guihen Queyras is a professor at the Freiburg University of Music and director of the Festival Rencontres Musicales de Haute-Provence.
In 2008, he was voted “Artist of the Year” by Diapason readers. That same year, he won the Victories de la Musique Classique award for Best Instrumental Soloist. This latter award recognizes the recipient’s excellence, creativity, and virtuosity
In 2024, Queyras performed with the Kyiv Camerata and visited a hospital (Recovery Ukraine) treating soldiers wounded in the Russian invasion. He also visited a clinic for children with trauma caused by the same event. In 2025, after Zelensky's first visit to Trump and seeing how Trump disparaged the Ukrainian president, Queyras donated all the money earned from his five US concerts to UNITED24,a Ukrainian organization and an official Ukrainian government platform for raising funds to aid Ukraine..
Queyras' cello
Queyras plays the Kaiser Stradivarius (Cremona, 1707), on loan from Canimex Inc. of Drummondville, Quebec.
Jean-Guihen Queyras at the "Casa Stradivari"
The text accompanying the video explains that the Kaiser cello,
built by Stradivarius, had returned to the city of its birth.
Queyras was in Cremona to give a masterclass organized
by the Casa Stradivari Foundation.
Eleven students from various countries participated in the masterclass.
In the afternoon, the closing ceremony was held in the Sala Mafei.
All of this was part of an event that combined
music and the art of instrument making at the
start of the new school year.
Source: Quotidiano La Provincia di Cremona
Shared on YouTube - November 14, 2025
The website Tarisio offers information on great luthiers and this magnificent instrument throughout the centuries, as well as on the performers who played it. Tarisio has over 36.000 entries in open access. There may be information about the Kaiser cello on restricted pages, not open to the public. Likewise, other searches carried out in other possible sources have also yielded no results. Therefore, I cannot provide information about the owners and performers who were previously associated with this cello.
The relationship between performer and composer in Queyras's opinion
For Jean-Guihen Queyras, falling in love with the world of composers is essential.
To love Bach and admire Casals
Queyras loves both Bach and Casals; there is a deep and invisible connection between them.
In an interview with the newspaper El País, he said, regarding a blind audition of the slow movement of Beethoven's Sonata No. 5, performed by Pau Casals:
"...no cellist has captured the essence of the human being in each note like him. That's why it goes straight to your heart, like when someone hugs you, and you don't need to speak..."
Jean-Guihen Queyras - Alexander Melnikov
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sonata in G minor, Op. 19
IV - Allegro Mosso
Auto-generated YouTube
Provided por PIAS - May 5, 2022
Alexander Melnikov
Alexander Mélnikov (1973) was born in Moscow. He was a student of Lev Naumov (1925-2005) at the Moscow Conservatory, where he graduated. He also studied with Elisso Wirssaladze (1942) in Munich.
He won the Robert Schumann International Award in Zwicky (1989) and the Elisabeth International Award of Belgium in Brussels in 1991.
He possesses a wide repertoire, ranging from historically informed performances to works by Shostakovich, no forgetting Bach, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff...
Alexander Melnikov
Freiburger Barockorchester
Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Robert Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
DW Classical Music
Shared on YouTube - September 12, 2020
Melnikov performs regularly with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Musica Aeterna, and Akademie fur Alt Musik Berlin. He has appeared as a soloist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Gewandhauserorchester de Leipzig, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the BBC Philharmonic, among others.
With Queyras, he recorded Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano.
Melnikov had recorded 51 CDs up to that point. He won the BBC Music Magazine Award for his performance of Shostakovich's Prelude and Fugue
The concert works
The context in which the sonatas were written
It is said that Beethoven's two sonatas were written with their intended performer in mind: Joseph Linke (1783–1837). As for their dedication, the second edition (1819) lists Countess Maria von Erdödy (1778–1837), one of Beethoven's patrons. Interestingly, Linke was the tutor of the Countess' children.
Maria von Erdödy and Beethoven felt mutual admiration. Perhaps for this reason, some say that these sonatas were written out of the great esteem Beethoven felt for her.
In the program notes for the Beethoven Cello and Piano Sonata Cycle, (February 1981 - March Foundation), Enrique Franco and Cecilio Roda reproduce a fragment from an 1815 letter that Beethoven wrote to Countess von Erdödy in which he says: "We, finite beings who possess an infinite spirit, were born for pain and joy; And one could almost say that the chosen ones find joy through pain.”
This reflection can be understood even better by reading Georg Predota's article in Interlude (November 18, 1915), in which he explains that Beethoven had been suffering from illness and anxiety since 1812; Moreover, his deafness was becoming increasingly evident. It was a period in which financial problems also arose. Furthermore, his brother died in 1815, and Beethoven became embroiled in a long legal battle to obtain custody of his nephew Carl; and once he won, his nephew attempted suicide, something the composer could never understand. Adding to all this, he lost contact with the Countess, although they were able to re-establish it in 1815, as the letter testifies.
The same letter explains that the Countess had traveled to Jedlersee to try to improve her health condition. Illness was another aspect that the Countess and Beethoven had in common.
Even more, in an article by Emily E. Hogstad published on December 4, 2025, in Interlude, it is explained that the Countess was almost immobile due to a health crisis she suffered after her first childbirth.
She could barely walk. The music for her was a balm, especially Beethoven's music.
Hogtad also explains the significant role Countess von Erdödy played in Beethoven's professional life. A factor described even more extensively by Jan Hendrik Neumann in Jérôme (February 9, 2019). Beethoven was on the verge of accepting the position of Kapellmeister in Kassel, at the court of Jérôme Bonaporte (1784–1860), who had been appointed King of Westphalia (1807–1813) by his brother Napoleon. Upon learning of this, the Countess and Baron Ignaz Gleichauf von Gleichestein gathered a group of nobles and aristocrats to guarantee Beethoven a pension that would prevent him from leaving Vienna. to Kassel. They offered him a pension of 4,000 florins a year. Beethoven stayed, but problems soon arose: war broke out, inflation skyrocketed, and of all those committed to his cause, only Archduke Rudolf maintained the stipend, with a little over 1,300 florins a year.
Unconventional sonatas
The works possess characteristics that make them groundbreaking in relation to the ideas of the time, because they are very different from the traditional approaches of that era. Both the public and critics were baffled by these works, and yet, for the Romantic generation, they were considered fascinating.
In the urtext edition of the Sonata in C major, Op. 102 No. 1, published by G. Henle Verlag, a review from 1818 is quoted as saying: “Without a doubt [the sonatas] are among the most unusual and peculiar things written in a long time” The sonatas date from 1815, and the first edition is from 1817.
The term “urtext” means that the edition is based on original sources without later additions or alterations.
In this type of edition, the aim is to be as faithful as possible to what the author wrote.
Therefore, they use the authors' manuscripts and first editions.
If they reach a point where they must make a choice in order to edit the works, this choice is justified with a report. For this reason, this type of edition is sometimes called a “historical-critical edition.”
In this case, the edition is by Jens Dufner (1971), the piano fingering is by Ian Fountain (1971), and the cello fingering and bowing are by David Geringas (1946).
The peculiarities of the Sonata in C major Op. 102, no. 1
Beethoven wrote the text “Freie Sonate” on it, which means "free sonata".
It has been debated whether it was written in two movements instead of the usual four, or whether the movements should be performed without distinction.
In the concert by Queyras and Melnikov, it was structured in two movements: I Andante – II Allegro vivace
Jean-Guihen Queyras - Alexander Melnikov
Ludwig van Beethoven
Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102, No. 2
I - Allegro con brio
Auto-generated YouTube
Provided by Harmonia Mundi - November 19, 2017
Cello and Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 19 by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff dedicated this work to Anatoliy Bradukov (1856–1930), who premiered it with the composer in Moscow in December 1901.
Rachmaninoff wrote this sonata after suffering a nervous breakdown caused by the rejection and harsh criticism of his first symphony, which premiered in 1897.It was a work that also transgressed conventional concepts. Rachmaninoff was 24 years old.
He titled it Sonata for Piano and Cello, probably because both instruments have equal prominence. It was published under that title in 1902.
On the label's record release Hyperion dedicated to this sonata, an edition made by Steven Isserlis (1958), cello and Sir Stephen Hough (1961), piano, it is written that it is a work that owes its sound to the influence of Russian church music.
In another edition, this one from Deutsche Grammophon, it is described as a monumental sonata, as demanding and prominent for the piano as for the cello. (This is a recording by Yuja Wang and Gautier Capuçon).
The title of the concert
Beethoven, when he composed these sonatas, was 45 years old and would die at 56, while Rachmaninoff, as mentioned earlier, was 24 when he composed his sonata. The sonatas were the beginning of the final stage of a composer's career (Beethoven) and the consolidation of recognition for a still young composer who had already tasted failure (Rachmaninoff).
Other similarities between the sonatas of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff
Furthermore, these sonatas share other similarities because they broke the theoretical boundaries of the sonata form. They are works that challenged preconceived notions of what a sonata should be. (In reality, creative force tends to overflow established frameworks.)
María Dolores García Martínez
esguarddedona
