Prélude

12? If you visit the website of the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic you will soon learn better. The case with the ensemble is exactly the reverse of the pirate crew in Michael Ende’s book Jim Knopf and the Wild 13. The “13” pirates couldn’t count and there were only 12 of them. The “12” Cellists can count, but there are in fact 13 of them. In 1991 the cello section of the Berlin Philharmonic was enlarged by one player, and since then there has always been one to sit on the substitutes’ bench – a very welcome provision when there’s pressure of work.

At first sight, that would seem to be where comparisons between the 12 Cellists and Ende’s pirates should end. When they come on to the platform and raise their bows, they are certainly not about to launch into raucous songs full of “Yohohos”, even if they do sometimes augment their playing with vocal contributions (only when it’s in the score). And so far as anyone knows they have never yet come to blows over the question of who should be captain.

And yet: the story of a chamber ensemble which began thirty years ago with almost no repertory, has since gone from strength to strength, drawing presidents, emperors, kings, composers, critics and us ordinary mortals in its wake, and has seen the rise of virtually an entirely new genre comprising new compositions as well as arrangements – such a tale is so strange and unique that it could have sprung from the fertile brain of an author of children’s adventure stories.

Allemande: Some explanations

How is it that these 12 cellists have often been copied but never overtaken? That an ensemble in which today only one of its original members still plays keeps on adding to its history of successes – by now a substantial chapter in the history of music? That it appears to experience neither spiritual nor “material” exhaustion?

There are three obvious reasons: they are 12 cellists, they are 12 cellists, and they are 12 cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic.

12 is no ordinary number but carries an unusual weight of symbolic, religious and mythical associations. A more profane consideration, but decisive in this context, is that 12 cellos are a large enough body to generate as full a sound as any chamber orchestra, capable of filling a large concert hall. Moreover, composers and arrangers find that 12 is wonderfully convenient for subdivision into equal groups of two, three, four or six players. The fact that in 1972, when everything began, with the Salzburg Austrian Radio (ORF) recording of Julius Klengel’s Hymnus played by the 12 Cellists, there existed only this one piece of music for that combination of players can be regarded with hindsight as nothing other than a tragic mistake of music history – and one that has been put right. Since 1972 the “12” have been positively inundated with new compositions. We get to hear the good ones; most of the bad ones are somewhere in Rudolf Weinsheimer’s cellar. “There’s a five-foot stack of pieces we started to run through and abandoned”, says Weinsheimer, one of the founding members and for 25 years the ensemble’s manager and driving force.

By the time the Salzburg performance of Klengel’s Hymnus switched the ignition on, the cello was already on a roll, fully-fledged as a fashionable instrument. No longer could orchestras – professional, school or amateurs gathering after work – complain of a shortage of cellists. When Weinsheimer came to the conclusion, on his way home from making that momentous recording, that “someone had to do something”, he did not foresee that he was about to turbo-charge the cello boom. Because the “12” brought the cello ensemble out of its niche, paraded it in triumph – and thereby legitimized it once and for all. Today all-cello bands of every size are everywhere: the record is held by the 1013 players of “Cellissimo grandioso” in Kobe in Japan: Rudolf Weinsheimer, again, had a hand in that as co-initiator and co-organizer. And when we hear of four Finns sawing away at Heavy Metal on their gambas energetically enough to make the walls shake, then we know for certain that no music of any kind is immune to being rehashed – ennobled! – by a cello ensemble.

As the ancestors of this idea of a string instrument monoculture, Pablo Casals and Julius Klengel would be tickled pink. They of all people always knew that if one instrument lends itself to this kind of usage it is the cello. It speaks in the register of the human voice and satisfies the need for soaring cantilena as easily as that for a solid foundation, it can generate rhythms that are assertive, brisk or jazzy, or it can lose itself in a universe of ethereal sound-painting. Everything it does sounds convincing and original in some way, given a cellist of sufficient mastery. We may elect the organ as the Queen of instruments, but, with characteristic understatement, the cello is the King.

Such qualities rub off, of course, on the person who sits behind the shapely wooden form and serves it. Cellists have wide horizons, they can see beyond the ends of their own noses, multi-tasking has no fears for them: their instrument trains them for it. Cellists must be ready to empathize with their big brothers on the double bass when called on to prop up the rest of the orchestra from below, but they must also keep their end up in conversation with the violins. At the same time, cellos inhabit the middle ground with an ease that must turn centrist politicians green with envy.

Cellists find themselves, therefore, with a particular need to organize themselves musically into their proper place within the orchestra. Hardly surprising, therefore, that the “12” have applied their acquired skills so successfully in marketing and managing themselves over the 30 years of the ensemble’s existence, squeezing their forays into concert halls and recording studios into the gaps between orchestral duty and leisure time. They give up to 25 concerts a year (the invitations to appear far exceed that number), they tour all over the world, and there will soon be a round dozen of recordings.

But in the end success like theirs comes down to artistic personality and technical excellence. In this respect, at least, chance has nothing to do with it and the fact that these are the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra everything. Just to be accepted as a member requires exceptional abilities, yet it is a peculiar characteristic of the Berlin orchestra that players preserve their own identities and contribute them to the whole. As Ludwig Quandt, a principal in the orchestra since 1993, puts it: “We all need to be a bit exhibitionist by nature, to enjoy being able to project ourselves. It’s a fundamental given that everyone plays like a soloist, both in the ensemble and in the orchestra. It’s a tradition of the orchestra that even the back desk plays at full throttle, in a positive sense of course, i.e. that the extremes are generated to the same degree everywhere in the orchestra.” That the sound remains homogenous is the secret of the Berlin Philharmonic’s greatness, and that of the “12” as well. Play in the orchestra: be a soloist.

Courante: Two brief episodes

Sunday, 15 September 1974, a festive public concert put on by Deutsche Welle television in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne. “Beneath a broad classical arch, the cellists of Berlin’s elite orchestra played for the peoples of the world”, the newspaper Kölner Rundschau would report later. The then president of the German Federal Republic, Walter Scheel, and his wife were but two of the many distinguished and famous people present. Mr Scheel had had a distinctive hit with his rendition of a folksong, “Hoch auf dem gelben Wagen”, the proceeds of which he had given to charity. The 12 cellists from Berlin knew of this, and at the end of an as usual successful concert, with the calls for encores persisting, they could not resist playing a version of the song specially arranged for them. Whether or not the Bundespräsident joined in is not recorded but afterwards he shook each of the cellists by the hand in thanks, and the Kölner Rundschau concluded: “It would be hard to deny that Deutsche Welle succeeded in demonstrating the relevance of 2000 years of European culture to modern Germany and its head of state.”

Korea, Seoul, on the day of the playoff between Korea and Turkey for third place in the 2002 World Cup. The “12” are due to give their concert in the afternoon, and it will be the turn of the Korean “11” in the evening. The whole city is shaking. Seoul is drunk with football. The musicians know exactly where they’re at. 3000 people fill the concert hall, applaud vigorously at the end and demand encores. Nothing unusual there. But then something happens that no one in the audience could have expected. The “12” return to the stage wearing the red T-shirts of Korean supporters and launch into an arrangement (very hastily made by a Korean) of the song the fans sing to cheer their side on in the stadium. The effect on the audience is incredible, the auditorium is transformed into a seething stadium. At least 3:0 to the Berlin Cellists.

Sarabande: Remarks on rehearsing
(principal cellist Georg Faust in conversation with the writer)

“For a new piece we certainly need five to seven rehearsals. You must always remember that we play without conductor, and the writing is often very complex, because there isn’t the usual spread from top to bottom – Cello 1 is top, Cello 12 is bottom – but it constantly changes. To play a piece seamlessly and homogenously but at the same time give it our individual stamp we just do need a lot of time to rehearse it. First we must work out the common pulse, because of course everyone feels a tempo slightly differently. That’s ultimately why the concert experience is so important, concentration is at its peak there. Moreover, a lead cellist can’t direct in the same way as a conductor or a first violinist. With a violin a player is much more mobile, he can give a lot more signs. As a cellist you can waggle your head, and that’s it.

“When we get a new work, first of all Ludwig Quandt and I decide which of us is going to lead. It’s the leader’s job to study the piece with the full score, find out where the problems are, what passages in particular will require work. And the leader also has the right to direct the first rehearsal, so as to lay the foundations. Then follows a process of working together: smaller groups who play specific things together discuss bowing, consider suggestions about tempo or dynamics ... That’s another reason why it takes so much time, because we do try to be democratic in the ensemble. Every one of us really does have an equal right to give his opinion and make suggestions, and then of course that often leads to discussion – unless time’s very short, and then someone has to be able to say if the process is taking too long. We can always discuss it later, after the concert, but the first thing is to get it up and running. To that extent, I think, we’ve found a good balance between leading from the front and a democratic basis.”

Bourée I: Crossover – how it began
(Rudolf Weinsheimer in conversation with the writer)

“There was a programme on ZDF television with Caterina Valente, called ‘In Love with Music’. ZDF called me: ‘Mr Weinsheimer, we would like to book the 12 Cellists.’ I happened to be at the seaside with my wife and I asked her what on earth we could play. She thought we ought to play Yesterday by the Beatles. I knew next to nothing about the Beatles, so first I rang the arranger Werner Müller, leader of the RIAS Dance Orchestra at the time. He said he’d do it and while he was at it he arranged St Louis Blues too. So those were the first two pieces of their kind. They were so fantastic on television that after that we always played them as encores in concerts. And then one day my colleague Klaus Häussler had the idea of recording a whole CD of Beatles numbers – and that’s when it really took off. Perhaps one of us said ‘We really can’t do that’, but then he noticed the success ...”

Bourée II: Crossover – how it continued
(composer and arranger Wilhelm Kaiser-Lindemann in conversation with the writer)

“When I wrote Bossa nova, I hadn’t heard the 12 Cellists live before. And then the requests started pouring in. ‘We need arrangements, let’s ask “Kaiser Wilhelm”.’ Of course I took that as a compliment, it was fantastic, because from a purely technical point of view, from a composer’s standpoint, I knew I was writing for people each of whom is good enough to be principal in every other Grade A orchestra in Germany. Then I had a chat with the two principals and asked them whether it was alright with them if once in a while they just played ‘shrum-shrum-shrum’ and gave the others a chance to show what they could do. ‘Yes, go ahead, not us all the time, but the others, no one ought to be bored.’ And of course that’s a situation every writer – composer or arranger – dreams of. Then when I first heard them playing Bossa nova I thought to myself, ‘Goodness, I’ve never heard anything like it.’

“Caravan, for instance, was really difficult, I arranged the parts at the last minute, I mean, I notated improvisations for them, and that was really hairy. But they played it, all of them excelled themselves. If you give these absolutely worldclass musicians a challenge, the effect is explosive.

“One experience that made a really deep impression on me was the two negro spirituals, Deep River and Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. I thought to myself ‘that’s a prayer’, and I arranged it for them the way I play it on the piano. I was in Berlin for the rehearsal and sat down in front of them. ‘Okay, I’ll conduct’, but after the first piece I said, ‘Gentlemen, you don’t need me, I’m only in your way.’ So they went on without me and I sat down in the corner and I couldn’t hold back the tears, I was so moved by what they did with it. These 12 guys, they’re up for any tomfoolery, and all at once they really prayed. And it’s the same with every piece I’ve written for them, every one takes on a life of its own, and afterwards I feel as if only half of it was mine.”

Gigue: Facts and Figures

In the beginning there was Klengel. In the run-up to the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1972, an enquiry went to Berlin: could Austrian Radio record Klengel’s Hymnus for 12 cellos? It could. The ensemble’s first rehearsal took place in Berlin on 19 February and the first public performance in the Mozarteum in Salzburg on 23 March.

Next was Boris Blacher. Fate decreed that one spring evening in 1972 his daughter Tatjana hitched a lift in the Mercedes of a perfect gentleman who drove her home. The kind gentleman was Rudolf Weinsheimer, who had the presence of mind to ask for a composition in recompense for his services as chauffeur. He got Rumba philharmonica, to which Blacher later added Blues and Espagnola.

Then a piece was commissioned from Helmut Eder, a baroque suite by David Funck was resurrected, and the whole rounded off with Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasilieras No. 1. “All at once we had a complete programme”, says Rudolf Weinsheimer. “We played it 250 times, no question, all over the world.”

26 October 1973, the Okuma Hall of Weseda University in Tokyo: the first complete concert given by the 12 Cellists. The enthusistic reception was repeated at their second concert, given on Easter Monday 1974 in the Salzburg Mozarteum. In the audience, Herbert von Karajan, who declared that only now did he know what he could demand from his cellists.

The “12”’s triumphal progress had begun. Word of this exceptional ensemble spread among concert promoters, and composers sharpened their pens. The repertory grew rapidly: Jean Françaix, Marcel Rubin, Iannis Xenakis, Rudolf Kelterborn, Cäsar Bresgen, Werner Thärichen, Noam Sherif, Udo Zimmermann, Günter Bialas, Wolfgang Fortner, Arvo Pärt are just some of the names, and arrangers include Werner Müller, Rolf Kühn and Shigeaki Saegusa.

The cellists girdled the earth, were awarded the State Prize in Israel, gave concerts at the Nato summit in Bonn, at the CSCE conference in Budapest, and the state visit of the Federal German President to Stockholm. They played in the imperial palace in Tokyo, with the Empress Michiko at the piano. The honours heaped on them include the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis in 1982 and the Echo Klassik in 2001.

They celebrate their anniversary this year with today’s concert and with a tour to Japan. There is much to look forward to: compositions from Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pinscher and Christian Joost, and next year, at long last, their historic debut in Carnegie Hall. (On the first attempt, the promoter made a mistake that should have been avoided and they had to play at short notice in the smaller Recital Hall.)

Two years from now they expect to give the first performance of a piece for 12 cellos and orchestra by Tan Dun, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. He has already rapped with his 12 cellists, as you can hear on their latest CD.