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It’s one of classical music’s most iconic moments: the first bow strokes of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Exposed, simultaneously joyful and tragic, history’s greatest cellists from Jacqueline du Pré to Yo-Yo Ma to Pablo Casals have put their stamp on one of the most beloved pieces in the cello repertoire.
Now, it’s Sung-Won Yang’s turn.
The French-Korean cellist recently recorded the concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, the latest in a storied career that has included performances on every major stage in the world and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. Throughout his career, however, Yang has always managed to find the time to return to one of the most formative places in his career: the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where he reconnects with natural beauty and inspiration.
“We perform some of the greatest masterpieces written for literature of classical music,” Yang says, “but even better is to try to connect with these spirits what they had wished to convey.”
Yang has been connecting with the artistic spirit of Banff since the mid-1980’s, and recorded his debut album of cello sonatas by Zoltan Kodaly in the Banff Centre’s Rolston Recital Hall. This record remains the most popular in Yang’s catalogue to this day, and he has also frequently returned as a juror for the celebrated Banff International String Quartet Competition.
“To be in Banff is something extraordinary,” says Yang, marveling at the tree-covered slopes that have hardly changed in his four decades of seeing them, “because literally, your visibility is at the infinite. Somehow, you come up here and you know your potential is also infinite. To be up here gives you a totally different frame of what are the possibilities within your own natural talent and what you can do to explore in depth. Banff has always been a place to grow, not a place to play better – it was far beyond that.”
While the rarified air of the Banff Centre is beautiful to behold, it does have an impact on the musicians who perform here. The drier conditions and sudden changes in humidity can warp an instrument and affect its tuning. While Yang is sensitive to each environment that he is working in and adjusts accordingly, the artistic spirit of Banff and the nourishment it gives to the spirit far outweighs the physical challenges it poses.
“Being up here in Banff, it gives you this incredible inner energy, not muscular energy,” explains Yang, “but you feel inspired. You feel your inner senses are much better in balance. You have found your equilibrium, the inner equilibrium. That energy – in Korea, we call ki, in Chinese, they call chi – this is not something we can touch, but we can feel. These melodies, rhythms, these pulses are coming from way deep in the mountains and to be playing this cultural heritage which comes from the deep mountains in the Canadian Rockies, there’s a relationship that you can do in your inner world which is really, really inspiring.”