Camille Thomas plays Glass

This is KBACH’s First Take and I'm Michael Keelan. I'm talking with cellist Camille Thomas about her new double album of the music by Philip Glass. This includes the Brussels Philharmonic and guests. Thanks very much for talking with us today. Philip Glass has written an immense amount of music. How much of it did you know before you made this album?

The first piece I “met” is the Violin Concerto that Gidon Kremer recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic and Christoph von Dohnányi. It was really my first shock with Philip Glass's music. Of course, I had heard some soundtracks when I was a teenager, but I was not aware of Philip Glass. And I knew the piano music, but I felt, "It's so beautiful, but I cannot play it." So yeah, I loved it. But when I heard the Violin Concerto, I was so impressed and moved to hear his music played by a string instrument, and of course by the interpretation of Gidon Kremer, and to hear also the orchestral sound that he could produce, the hypnotic rhythm mixed with some very lyrical lines that are going so well with the violin. And I said, "Oh, I would love to play that on the cello." But I didn't know about the two cello concertos. So it was only some years later that I received a message from Philip Glass. At that time, I knew so much more about his piano études, all the wonderful soundtracks. And I had already recorded two pieces by him for Deutsche Grammophon: Tissue No. 6 and No. 7 on my album Voice of Hope.

And he wrote me in his message, he said that he liked very much this recording, and if I knew his two cello concertos. And very, how was it, ashamed because I didn't. So I went immediately on Spotify to listen to them, and I fell in love. And I saw they really deserve a recording of the two pieces together, a full recording dedicated to Philip Glass, a tribute to this immense composer who will celebrate his 90th birthday in January. So yeah, that's how everything started.

Right, and Gidon Kremer of course made the recording of his Second Violin Concerto also. And when I listen to the two cello concertos, I hear some similarities in how he handles the solo instrument in the First Concerto for both violin and cello, and then changes it in the Second Concerto. Can you talk about the different role that the cello has in those two concertos?

Yes, the First Concerto it is very prominent. It starts a little bit, I would say, like the Elgar Cello Concerto, with very strong and low chords on the cello, and it's very rich. The beginning is like a lion who would roar and take all the space. And then there are some very lyrical passages, singing passages. The second movement is full of incredible singing.

And the Second Cello Concerto is more like a sinfonia concertante. So it means that the cello is, of course, a solo instrument, but also a part of the orchestra. There are not two persons; it's just one piece where everybody is coming together. That's my feeling about the difference.

And that Second Concerto is drawn from music for his score to the film Naqoyqatsi. And I am guessing that you would agree with my assessment that you do not have to see the movie to engage with the music as a cello concerto, correct?

Oh yes, correct! Yes, so the Second Cello Concerto has a story, because he first wrote the music for the soundtrack for Naqoyqatsi, which is a very strong movie and very special because it has no dialogues, no voiceover. It's just all about the image and the music. So the music is a little bit the main character of the movie.

It's a movie, so Naqoyqatsi: Life as War. It's the last movie of a trilogy, the Qatsi trilogy, and this one is about the destruction of Earth by humanity through technology. So it was visionary. It came out in 2002.

And it has seven movements. And then three years later, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra asked Philip Glass to compose a second cello concerto, and he took three movements out of the soundtrack Naqoyqatsi, and he made it a Second Cello Concerto. And that's what he sent me, and it's a wonderful score, and it's beautifully performed by Matt Haimovitz on the recording.

But when I discovered the soundtrack, I said, "Oh, it's such a pity to leave behind eight of the movements," because when you have them all together, it's really epic. There is so much variety, so much contrast, violence, but also ethereal moments, fire, destruction, mechanic, you can hear the mechanic music, or sometimes almost techno music. It's a very, very unexpected work by Philip Glass.

So I asked him if it would be possible to keep the seven movements, so to make like a suite of movements from Naqoyqatsi, and that that would be my version of the Cello Concerto No. 2. And he agreed. So that's what I present on the album. So to make a cello concerto, I just had to shorten the 11 movements a little bit, because the film is, of course, more than one hour, and a cello concerto lasts approximately 30 minutes, so it couldn't be as long as the original soundtrack.

The description of the score for Naqoyqatsi on Philip Glass's own website has the phrase "tons of percussion," so lots of percussion instruments in it. Does it mean that you need to change your approach in any way when you hear the harshness or the bitterness of a snare drum or other percussion in the background compared to some of the other music on this album where you're surrounded by this lush string sound of many cellos?

Yeah, and that is exactly what I love about this concerto: the tons of percussion, because he invents sounds that you never hear anywhere else. He really creates worlds in all 11 movements. It's a masterpiece, really.

The other pieces, as I alluded to a moment ago, have other cellists on the album too, some of them members of the Brussels Philharmonic. How did you come to arrange this music? You did some of the arranging, and other people did other arrangements, and it's mostly piano music.

Yes, it's all piano music, and it all started with my Chopin project. It's a little bit a continuation of that, because when I recorded this album dedicated to Chopin, Chopin and Glass are two pianists who are also composers. Maybe their most beautiful pieces are written for their instrument.

But at the time of the Chopin recording, I was playing a Stradivarius who was played by Auguste Franchomme, cellist, the best friend of Chopin in Paris. And I discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France a manuscript where Franchomme has arranged Chopin piano solo music for four cellos. So I thought, "Wow, if Chopin agreed that his friend did these arrangements, then yeah, let's go! And let's play some wonderful piano music."

And so that's why I asked Philip Glass if he would agree that I try and I do this arrangement with the piece that I feel, the Piano Études, that could really sound so well on the cello. And his answer was, "Yes, Camille, always yes," because he doesn't want his music to be in a box, in a closed box. He wants his music to live, to be taken by the players, and to have different forms. And I think it's part of his generosity that he has to just want to give his music.

So I recorded two études with the cellists of the Brussels Philharmonic. Number 6 is for cello, the beginning of the étude, and the part where the piano is playing pianissimo. And then the piano has a huge fortissimo. It's a huge contrast. And we thought with Oscar Jockel, the composer—he's composer also and conductor of the album—that that would be so great to have a full tutti of the orchestra to create this gigantic impression.

And the rest of the arrangements I did them in Berlin with my dear teacher Wolfgang Schmidt and his cello class from Weimar. And that was a moment of transmission, of joy, of sharing the love of the sound of the cello that we all learned from this great, great master.

This is a very impressive double album with cellist Camille Thomas and members of the Brussels Philharmonic of Philip Glass's music. Thanks for talking on First Take today.

Thank you very much!