SMU Research - Volume 14 2007

Notes on paper serve as the road map of a musical performance, yet a road map cannot tell a driver everything about a journey, such as how beautiful
the scenery is, for example. Cellist Andrés Díaz, who joined the Music Division of Meadows School of the Arts in September, believes in going beyond the printed notes to gain a complete picture of the
music he is playing.

“My students sometimes get frustrated because I require them to do so much musical research,” he says. “There’s something about my personality that does not let me play anything unless I understand what I am doing.

“I don’t feel that I am natural enough as a musician or a player to just learn something and know it’s going to be right. I like to have history behind what I am playing, to understand the composer. I’d like to be able to speak a composer the way I would speak a language – without an accent.”

Díaz cites one of Robert Schumann’s later works, the Cello Concerto, as an example of how knowledge of a composer’s life and the history of a work can provide a performer insight beyond knowledge of the notes. Schumann was mentally ill when he composed it. “It is important to know that at the time he was institutionalized and in very bad shape,” Díaz says. “In a letter that accompanied the piece he complained that he kept seeing angels and devils.
I think at that point in his life his middle personality had completely disappeared. He was either here [Díaz gestures upward] or here [downward].”

Díaz believes the opening of the concerto reflects this emotional chaos.
“You hear ‘Schumann’ and you automatically think, ‘This is going to be a
great ride.’ And it’s not. You’re dealing with some of the most horrifying feelings and ugliness that could come out of this personality. And then, from one note to the next, he shifts into this dreamy, wonderful, gorgeous
music. This keeps happening; the changes just don’t stop.

“And if you create that and don’t round off the corners, I promise that until the cello lets go of that last cadence [in the opening], you won’t give people a moment to move or breathe.”

Taking music seriously is a family tradition. Last year Andrés’ brother, Roberto, left his position as principal violist of the Philadelphia
Orchestra to become president of the Curtis Institute of Music. His sister, Gabriela, is a professional violinist. Another sister, Jenny, is a trained musician but not a professional. Their father, Manuel, is a former violist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Manuel’s first wife, Pauline, who died in 1976 and is the mother of Jenny, Roberto and Andrés, was also a musician. Manuel’s second wife, Betty Anne, Gabriela’s mother, is another musician.

“There was a lot of music around the house,” Roberto says. “It
wasn’t certain that we would be professionals, but with both of our
parents being musicians, we were expected to be at least musically
educated. We had fun with it always, but we were expected to
practice and take it seriously.”

Andrés began the study of cello at age 4 with Arnaldo Fuentes,
principal cellist of the Chilean Philharmonic in Santiago, where Andrés
was born. In 1973, when he was 8, the family emigrated from
Chile to Atlanta, where Andrés was taught by Martha Gerschefski.

After high school he entered the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and studied with Larry Lesser. While still at the Conservatory, Díaz won the prestigious Naumburg International
Cello Competition in New York in 1986. “I remember calling Lawrence Lesser and telling him I had just won the Naumburg,” he says. “I expected a congratulation, but I didn’t get one. He said, ‘Oh
boy. Your problems have just begun.’ And he was right.” The Naumburg often leads to a career as a concert artist, and the life of a touring virtuoso can be hectic.

Díaz since has toured internationally as a concerto soloist and
chamber music player. He often performs as a member of the Díaz
Trio, which includes violinist Andrés Cárdenes, concertmaster of
the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the two Díaz brothers. Since joining
SMU, he also has performed with the Meadows Symphony Orchestra
and as a soloist in Caruth Auditorium.

In addition, Andrés has taught at the Boston Conservatory
and Boston University, as well as with the extension division of the
New England Conservatory of Music. Some of his private students
have attended Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. His students gain the benefit not only of Díaz’s own skill as a performer and teacher but also his experience as a concert artist. Even more
important, however, they are participating in the same learning process as Diaz, which continues even after acquiring a broad knowledge
of music in school, he says.

A musician continually must delve into a composer’s compositional
methods, he says. “You have to develop a new technique for
every kind of piece, for every composer, and also for every piece by
the same composer. Playing an earlier Brahms sonata is not the
same as playing a later Brahms sonata. In his earlier period Brahms
would take a theme and develop it for the whole piece. In his later
period he would actually take a fully developed theme and break
it down throughout the piece – almost the reverse of what he did
in the beginning.

“With Beethoven you have the three periods – early, middle and late – and it’s interesting to see how his style changed
throughout. He went from having pieces that were monumentally
big with this much information [holding two fingers close together] to having pieces like the last two sonatas that are 12 or 15 minutes long at the most and have 10 times as much information.”

What Diaz looks for in a work, and teaches his students to look for, is “depth,” or a quality beneath the surface of a piece that exerts a strong appeal to a listener’s psyche even if the work is not obviously attractive on a first hearing, he says. He mentions Lutoslawski’s “Gravé:Metamorphosis
for Cello and Piano,” a work he has recorded. He first played it on a
program that included a number of cello favorites. To his surprise,
the audience seemed to like it best.

“I do push my students to understand these things because if they don’t, it’s the equivalent of taking a test without reading any of the material. When you sit down and start practicing, you have to
know what you are doing. Knowing how to play the cello is nothing if you don’t know why a piece is important and what kind of approach
you want to have.

“I spend a lot of time when I’m traveling thinking about how I will approach a piece. I don’t like doing that with the cello in my
hands because you can so easily start playing and get into habits
that you’re going to have to change – and then the learning process
becomes so much longer.”

In fact, through requiring his students to conduct research on
the composers and their works they will perform, Diaz has encountered
reciprocity in the teaching process. “A lot of the information
I have learned from asking students to do research, or
having a student who’s really into a particular composer come in
and exchange information with me. Sometimes the cello doesn’t
even come out of the case. I learn as much or more than they do.”

Díaz’s former students confirm his broad-based teaching style
and willingness to tailor it to their individual needs. Jan Muller, who teaches cello at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, studied with Díaz at Boston University from 1994 to 2000. “He helped me grow as a musician not
only through the cello lessons but outside them,” says Muller,
also a native of Chile. The lessons, however, extended beyond
technique to broader considerations, he says. “When certain
topics came up, we would discuss those in depth – whatever the
need was at the moment.” Muller also says that Díaz “never inflicted
on me any dogmatic teachings. He helped me improve the
ideas I brought in.”

Tobias Werner is a native of Germany who is based
in Warm Springs, Virginia, and plays professionally with the Garth Newell Piano Quartet. During his cello studies at Boston University in the mid-’90s,
he found that Díaz paid special attention to “what’s behind cello playing, in a musical sense. He was trying for you to be very convincing, musically. There were a lot of conversations. It was not the typical teacher-student relationship, where you play and he tells you what is wrong.” Werner says that Díaz also emphasized the importance of a cellist studying the piano
part or the orchestral part in addition to his own music.

Florent Renard-Payen, a native of Paris, studied with Díaz in Boston for five years in the early 1990s. Now based in Clinton, New York, he’s the founder and a member of Tarab, an eight-cello ensemble committed to new music. Renard-Payen says that Díaz focused on the importance of knowing the different editions of a work. “The problem is that sometimes details are altered by well known cellists versus what the composer’s intention was,” he says.

Díaz urges his students to consult the most authentic sources, with
a minimum of alteration, to understand the composer’s intentions.
One further piece of Díaz advice to Renard-Payen: “Don’t listen to
recordings of pieces you are learning. Trust yourself.”

An unfortunate lesson that the teacher and his students have learned is that air travel with a cello is, in Díaz’s word, a “nightmare.” Not only do cellists have to buy a second plane ticket for their instrument (trusting it to the baggage hold is unthinkable), but passing through airport security has become challenging.

Díaz, who owns a rare 1698 Matteo Goffriller, recalls his experience at a checkpoint in Boston’s Logan Airport soon after 9/11. One of the security agents yanked out the cello from its case and began to look inside it by shining his flashlight through the f-hole. He banged the flashlight against the wood and cracked it. Repair of a 303-year-old cello can be very costly because it must be done by the right expert. But Díaz’s Goffriller is in good shape again.

Oh yes, no terrorist device was found inside.

For more information: http://www.andresdiaz.com.