Dual Inspiration

Cellist Sol Gabetta recalls the genesis of her new recording, a collaboration with mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli – and how their disparate talents played offeach other

- Peter Quantrill

This album is the result of many years of mutual admiration between Cecilia and me. She lives in Zurich, I live fairly nearby in Basel and we often meet in Gstaad, where she has given recitals. It’s inspiring for me not just to listen to a great singer, but also to learn more from her about stage presence and preparation. We all know how important these things are but it’s so difficult to balance them at a high level. There are few people as professional as Cecilia in all aspects of her craft.

At the beginning of the project our researchers suggested so many pieces to us, and we had to sift through them all. Often the manuscripts were quite poor. Some composers wrote so clearly that we could work with the original manuscripts, but most of them needed recopying and we couldn’t do that with all the suggestions we had. So the first step was to select just 20 pieces, which Cecilia and I did separately. I chose the ones that interested me and that I thought would work well on the instrument. The amazing thing, though, is that 18 out of our 20 choices were the same, so we found it quite easy to decide on the programme! The pieces where both cello and mezzo-soprano voices are most equal are the slow, melancholy arias. The album cover makes us look like two girls having fun, but it was nothing to do with the repertoire, which is so delicate and deep.