Cellist joins returning maestro to close Vancouver Symphony Orchestra season

Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey will play Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

“Haydn’s First Cello Concerto is like popping open a bottle of champagne,” Bailey said. “It’s a joy. It’s celebratory.”

This cello concerto was lost for about 200 years, only rediscovered in 1961 when a musicologist stumbled on a copy of the score in the Prague National Museum. Over the past 60 years, Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 has become a staple of the orchestral repertoire, and any cellist worth his or her fingerboard has tried to learn it.

“I learned this concerto as a very young person because it teaches the geography of how the cello works through the different positions, the different bow techniques. It teaches intonation, and how to play cleanly,” Bailey said.

As a young kid, Bailey literally ran into a cello backstage after a concert and broke it. Then he became extremely passionate about the instrument immediately after he got his hands on it. He was just 4 years old.

“I was lucky to have educator parents – in fact, music educator parents,” said Bailey. “They felt that I needed to have a lot of different experiences. I took art classes, piano lessons; I played soccer. I enjoyed them all. But the moment I sat down and wrapped my arms around this wooden box, they said that I couldn’t stop playing. During my childhood, they had to ask me to stop playing: ‘Enough, you have to go to bed!’ They had to remind me of meals: ‘You have to eat!’ ”

Bailey has made the most of his passion. The award-winning cellist been featured in 23 recordings and has performed with orchestras all over the world. He is the director of the Center for Arts Entrepreneurship and professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is also the artistic director of El Paso Pro-Musica, the Sitka Summer Music Festival (Anchorage, Alaska), the Northwest Bach Festival (Spokane) and the Classical Inside and Out Series (Mesa, Ariz.).

In addition to the Haydn piece, Bailey will team up with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra cellists Dieter Ratzlaf, Erin Ratzlaf and Jonah Thomas to perform Max Bruch’s “Kol Nideri” (“All the Vows”) in an arrangement by Edward Laut. Inspired by Jewish themes, Bruch’s music accents the rhapsodic voice of a cantor during services based on a traditional chant sung on the eve of Yom Kippur.

The season-ending concert will also hail the return of music director Salvador Brotons, who has been sequestered in his hometown of Barcelona, Spain, for the past 14 months. Besides the Haydn, he will conduct two other pieces on the program: Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No 1.

“ ‘Appalachian Spring’ is a very moving piece,” Brotons said. “We are playing the original version, doubling the strings to make a fuller section. The piece is very difficult since there are lots of meter changes and uneven rhythms. I believe it is the most beautiful piece Copland wrote.”

Bloch moved to Agate Beach, Ore., in 1941, but wrote the Concerto Grosso No. 1 in 1925 while he was teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

“In this piece, Bloch successfully combines the baroque concept of ‘grosso versus solo’ with his 20th century style,” Brotons said. “Bloch’s Concerto Grosso has an important piano part that, along with a powerful string section, gives the piece a great variety of sounds. It is a challenging piece in four movements, ending with a spectacular fugue.”

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is closing this season, but will announce the lineup for its 2021-2022 season at 2 p.m. Tuesday on its website.

“We have scheduled exciting guest artists and are planning a live in-person season,” said Igor Shakham, executive director. “We will continue to do streaming for those who choose to watch concerts at home or for those out of town.”