No longer a prodigy, thank you
Cellist from a musical family is striking out on her own
Alisa Weilerstein always disliked being called a prodigy. Not that the label wasn't in some ways appropriate: The daughter of two professional musicians, she took up the cello at age 4, performed in public for the first time six months later, and played with the Cleveland Orchestra at 13. Still, the word had all the wrong resonances.
"I know a lot of people would think, 'That girl was abused and locked up in her room for 10 hours a day and forced to practice,' " she says by phone from her Boston apartment. "And my life was so not like that. . . . I was definitely ready to leave that part behind - become an adult, in a way."
Now 26, Weilerstein has built a burgeoning career based not only on youthful talent but on the kind of exacting, impassioned musicianship that impresses irrespective of age. She's already played with a variety of international orchestras and chamber-music collaborators. Her career takes another step forward on Sunday, when she makes her Boston recital debut at Jordan Hall, under the auspices of
"Playing in your hometown is very, very special," says Weilerstein, who moved to Boston from New York about a year and a half ago. She's played here often with her parents - violinist Donald Weilerstein and pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein - in the Weilerstein Trio, in residence at New England Conservatory. But this concert marks a more formal and substantial introduction to Boston.
For all her early success and recogni tion, the cellist says she was never pushed into choosing a life in music, as several children of musicians have been.
"I was always the one doing the pushing," she says. "I always wanted to do more." Yet she was also independent-minded enough to know that she didn't want to have music become the whole of her life.
Indeed, it's a point of pride for her that she didn't attend a conservatory. Instead she went to Columbia University to study Russian history, while taking cello lessons with Joel Krosnick at Juilliard.
"It was the way I grew up," she says. "I was surrounded by music, which was wonderful. But I decided I really wanted something different when I went to college. I just wanted to be surrounded by different people, and I wanted to be well rounded in other fields."
Not that it was easy performing so widely while trying to get through college. "I remember at one point I was on a European tour and I was e-mailing four papers a week or something to my professors," she says. "It was really crazy." On the other hand, it allowed her to develop highly efficient time management when she practiced. "By the time I was through with college, I was able to get done in an hour what I used to get done in five."
Her parents, she says, nurtured her sense of independence. "That was their first priority: that I would be my own musician. Even in trio rehearsals, I was always allowed to speak my own mind, even when I was 7 or something. They wanted me to develop my own thought processes and develop the verbal capacity for expressing musical ideas."
That can make for some touchy moments, she admits, when the three play together as the Weilerstein Trio. Chamber music requires the interaction of strongly held views, but the family aspect can make it even more fraught.
"It's because we are so close, and we also have this incredible underlying respect for each other," she says. "But if you can imagine rehearsing with your family, of course there's going to be very difficult things about it." The Trio has given some marvelous performances in recent years, but she says, only half jokingly, that "rehearsals are not something I generally want people to observe."
Her program for Sunday's concert spans about 175 years and is highly varied in sound and mood. She begins with Beethoven's great final sonata for cello and piano and ends with Chopin's sole effort in the genre. In between are two works for unaccompanied cello: Kodaly's Sonata for Solo Cello and Osvaldo Golijov's "Omaramor."
The Kodaly is a strikingly angular work that pushes virtuosity to its limit. Indeed, you can get an idea of how assured an instrumentalist Weilerstein is by watching clips of her playing the piece posted on her website (alisaweilerstein.com). No matter how arduous the music becomes, there is a fluidity and inward focus to her playing that suggest a maturity beyond her years.
"I really think it's a masterpiece," she says of the Kodaly. "There's no other piece for solo cello like it. It just covers all the bases and has every emotion you could want."
The Golijov is a fantasy on a tango song called "My Beloved Buenos Aires." Though Weilerstein hasn't worked with the composer on it, she did work with him extensively last year when she played the New York premiere of "Azul" for cello and orchestra, which he revised extensively after its 2006 premiere. She calls the experience "one of the highlights of my musical life.
"Seeing how his mind works is really fascinating. He's such an inspired musician, and he's also incredibly spontaneous and impulsive," she says. "It was very much a collaborative process."
There are more milestones on the horizon, including her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut next March. But she's trying to keep focused on the here and now and protect the life outside of music she's cultivated so carefully. "It's important to find a balance, and it can be hard to do so, but it's a top priority for me," she says.
"I try to live in the present. I'm really enjoying what I'm doing now, and I'm incredibly busy, which is a great thing. I really get the greatest joy from working with people that I respect and learn from. That's what I want to continue doing."
Information: 617-482-6661, celebrityseries.org
Domingo on screen
Placido Domingo, who recently performed at the Citi Wang Theatre, can be seen again next weekend, this time on the big screen. Domingo, general director of the Los Angeles Opera, celebrated the 40th anniversary of his first professional appearance in the city with a gala concert in April. Landmark Theatres will broadcast it at 22 cinemas across the country on May 11, including the Kendall Square Cinema, at 2 p.m. 617-621-1202, landmarktheatres.com
