From Ruben to Rohan
75 years ago: A very young Rohan de Saram at his very first concert at the Grand Oriental Hotel
Ruben Jeyasundaram never met Rohan de Saram before his passing last September, yet the renowned cellist was paradoxically a frequent presence. An accordion player who had played often with de Saram and who knew Ruben as well would frequently ask Ruben if he had met de Saram. Ruben developed a fondness for the cello solos of the contemporary Italian composer Luciano Berio. The composition initially had about a dozen sequenza, but Berio so admired de Saram that he composed a 14th specially for him, complete with the influences of Kandyan drums improbably worked in.
“You have to hit the wood of the cello with your right hand and your left hand is striking the strings,” Ruben explains of Berio’s 14th sequenza. “When I was 15, I wanted to play it. This time I wanted to play it, but it requires half a year (of preparation),” says Ruben.
The Hamburg-based cellist is now 38 and has performed at venues as varied as the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Zaha Hadid-designed spaceship that is the Guangzhou Opera House and with many German opera orchestras. Ruben is both passionate about the classical repertory, as one would expect of a renowned cello player who has been playing concerts since he was eight, but also wedded to the more avant-garde and contemporary – as de Saram was. On Ruben’s to do list as a composer for this year is recreating a soundtrack for a video game that he much admired as a child.
Ruben Jeyasundaram. Pic by Benjamin Schultheis
Today, Sunday February 16, Ruben and the Chamber Music Society of Colombo will pay tribute to de Saram in a programme that includes Dimitri Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata in D Minor, ‘Romance’ from the string quartet No. 1 by Sergei Rachmaninov and Francesco Geminiani’s La Folia, also for a string quartet. It’s an eclectic, engaging and enchanting programme that the CMSC hopes will become an annual commemoration of de Saram. The jaunty, occasionally jazz-like Shostakovich cello sonata is a favourite of many cellists, but Ruben can claim a pedagogical connection to the first performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies outside the Soviet Union. Ruben was taught in Frankfurt by the son of the German conductor who premiered these symphonies outside the former Soviet Union. A remarkably self-assured Ruben played the second movement of the cello sonata, composed in 1934, when he was 14 in a youth competition.
The 25-minute cello sonata is at the heart of the programme on Sunday. The piece was written in a tumultuous period for Shostakovich, while he pursued an extra-marital affair. “He wrote it for a friend,” says Ruben. “To my mind, this was his carefree life.”
That characterisation of the composer’s state of mind is an allusion to the fact that Shostakovich had not yet fallen afoul of Joseph Stalin’s regime for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, which was denounced by Pravda later in 1934, days after Stalin left midway through its performance. “You want it to be a political sonata. The truth is the first movement was written after he had a fight with his wife,” says Ruben. Thereafter, Shostakovich’s life became an image of hell for someone in the creative arts, hauntingly reimagined by Julian Barnes in his novel The Noise of the Time. Barnes depicts the composer as so traumatised that he gave up tossing and turning in bed at night and took to sitting fully dressed by the elevator near his apartment in anticipation of being arrested by the authorities. Ruben sees the cello sonata as highly melodic and yet at times having the quality of a lament, showing how fast Shostakovich could change character.
Rohan de Saram
Demonstrating a similar dexterity, Ruben’s captivating performance at the Dutch Reformed Church in Galle last Saturday with the CMSC began with the first movement of Paul Hindemith’s cello sonata, Opus 25, No. 3. As an opening to a concert in a centuries-old church, the music, which oscillates between C major and C sharp major, was arresting, even mildly shocking. “The music is fighting itself,” says Ruben. But the acoustics and Ruben’s supple playing must have made many converts that evening even though it is scarcely 1.5 minutes long. Ruben then changed tack altogether with a rendition of the Sarabande from Bach’s cello suite No.5, that was delicate as the Hindemith was rambunctious. The Rachmaninov string quartets that followed featured an elegant conversation between the cellist and principal violinist Lakshman Joseph-de Saram.
Ruben said church acoustics made it necessary to slow down and “overarticulate” in the manner that an actor might in a stage performance. With an unusually expressive face and his forelocks bouncing when he is playing, Ruben sometimes seemed a cellist who might moonlight as a reggae artist.
Ruben is in the midst of a one-month residency with the CMSC as its guest principal cellist, supported by the Goethe Institut Sri Lanka. Last Saturday, he was part of a buoyant esprit de corps with other members of the CMSC quartet during a sweltering rehearsal at lunchtime in Galle, even as fans blew the pages about like leaves in the wind. For this Sunday’s concert, which features three cello and piano collaborations, Ruben has enjoyed working with Johann Peiris, who he describes as “a very sensitive musician”, generously adding “the truth is that often no one in a concert has more work to do than the pianist.”
Memories of de Saram’s extraordinary career will loom large over the performance. Early on, Pablo Casals who taught him said there were few of his generation who had such gifts. This year marks the 65th anniversary of de Saram’s performance of Khachaturian concerto with the New York Philharmonic. Closer to home, it is the 75th anniversary of de Saram’s first concert, which was at the Grand Oriental Hotel.
For Ruben, playing at a concert in memory of the great Sri Lankan British cellist is both an “insane honour” and also a poignant moment. When Ruben heard of de Saram’s passing six months ago, he regretted not having written to a cellist he had long admired. Today, the concert will undoubtedly be a special communique of its own.
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