I was recently invited to a private concert given by cellist Benedict Kloeckner (photo) with the excellent pianist Anna Fedorova) and I immediately offered him an interview during a lunch.
This 35-year-old German cellist now lives in Paris with his French wife, a violinist.
He is already one of the great international soloists; when I asked him if it was not a little reckless of him to settle in our country which has become a “reservoir” of world-class cellists: “Not at all! It’s an opportunity to listen to them and discover other musical and instrumental worlds”.

Family

“I am married to violinist Clémence de Forceville, first solo violin of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.
My father practiced music a lot – piano and violin, took lessons with great teachers, but he finally embraced a career as a lawyer: no one is perfect!
I started playing the piano at six and the cello at nine. My father often played in a trio and I was in charge of turning the pages for the pianist. I was fascinated by the sound of the cello and started asking my parents to take lessons on this instrument, around the age of 6 or 7. My parents insisted that there was a piano at home and that it would be easier to continue practicing. But after two years, I finally won the case! and I was immediately taken by the sound of this instrument, even if it was only a study instrument of Asian origin I think.

Studies

I started studying with a young cellist who played with my father, then I went to university with a teacher who had himself studied with Navarra and who taught me the basics of the instrument.
I then went to the University of Kronberg, near Frankfurt – a special university: there were only twelve students in the cello class, but with excellent elements such as Edgard Moreau, Pablo Ferrández or Kian Soltani – we had cello lessons with Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman but also with artists from other worlds: Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Iouri Bashmet etc. We had a terribly dry studio where each student had to perform in front of the others: it was as difficult as it was educational.
It was Mstislav Rostropovich who was called at the beginning and helped to create a major music festival, then an academy initially intended exclusively for teaching the cello. The Kronberg Academy has become an important musical institution, with a “Pablo Casals” concert hall with about 800 seats and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe as its orchestra in residence.
I spent seven years at Kronberg; I entered professional musical life thanks to Michael Sanderling, cellist and conductor, one of the sons of Kurt Sanderling, currently conductor in Lucerne. I had attended one of his master classes after which he told me: “see you on stage”. A little doubtful, I received an email a week later from his agent to perform the Dvořák concerto with him in Berlin!

Instrument

The cello is of course a demanding instrument, which requires an almost instantaneous connection between the ear and the position of the bow, the gesture to have a correct intonation. You mention the problem of sound projection: it is essential, especially because the instrument emits more in the low midrange than a violin for example. I recently went to listen to Steven Isserlis and Truls Mørk, two magnificent cellists but with very different techniques – the first is very elegant and sophisticated but has less projection than the second, who is more ‘in the strings’. This is particularly important for the Dvořák concerto (Benedict Kloeckner has just released a double CD devoted to Dvořák’s cello works including this concerto): at the premiere of the work in 1896, a journalist noted that the cello was hard to hear in this work. The problem is that it is very well written, the winds must play piano or mezzo forte when the soloist plays; you just need to have good wind players in the orchestra and a good conductor – Cristian Măcelaru did the balance very well in the recording that has just been released. I always have a slightly ambivalent relationship with the recording: if I listen to it shortly after, I hate it; with time, I tolerate it better!

I play a cello by the luthier Francesco Rugeri, an instrument that Maurice Gendron played for a very long time. This year, I would have given about 80 concerts, notably in concerto but I devote a lot of time to chamber music, it must be said that we are always invited to play the same romantic concertos. You tell me that the 2nd Viennese school wrote very little for my

for my instrument and it’s true. Schoenberg wrote a cello concerto after Georg Matthias Monn – a work that I am currently working on; he really liked the little-known concerto by Karl Weigl (1934 – Weigl had been Mahler’s rehearsal pianist and had organized concerts with A. Schoenberg and B. Walter).

Repertoire

It starts with Bach, even if I want to work on works “before Bach”, but Bach is such a genius! Otherwise my repertoire goes as far as contemporary music, in almost all styles. You tell me about the difficulty of Kodaly’s Sonata for solo cello, which is of course a very difficult piece. There is an anecdote about it: a student had worked on it for about six months and played it in Budapest in front of the composer – at the end, he thanked Kodaly for coming and he said: “no, no, you’re welcome … can I just ask you a favor? Never play this piece again!” It is a piece that I play with great pleasure, in squadratura which almost gives double bass sounds at times. It was your friend the composer Éric Tanguy who first invited me to play in France, at Radio France in fact; he wrote a magnificent piece for solo cello for me. He is a composer that you recognize from the first bars of a work. As for current composers, I have also played Nicolas Bacri and I really appreciate the music of Dai Fujikura. I loved playing his cello concerto in Salzburg; he also wrote a good piece for me inspired by the Bach suites (playing the complete Bach Suites is very long, so I commissioned pieces from six composers that I am interspersing in the programs). He is also going to write a piece for cello and piano for me and a Japanese pianist. I have also worked a lot with Wolfgang Rihm.
It is also sometimes easier for performers to find money than for the composers themselves, even if it is becoming more and more difficult.

Projects

I am recording the Elgar concerto which will be released in 2015; next month I am recording a disc dedicated to Arvo Pärt with minimalist or mystical works, some written for the album. This is quite simple music, but it is very popular with record companies who are interested in this type of music to include it in popular playlists. The problem is that with streaming platforms, a 2’30” pop song is paid the same price as a 25′ movement of a Mahler symphony. I’m lucky to have a record publisher who still pays for the productions, but it’s becoming rare – For my recent album Dvořák, it will probably be “Silent woods” that will finance everything…
Recently, I participated in a recording for a publisher who only financed the illustration photos: the production was financed by a radio station and if I wanted an additional CD for my personal use, I had to pay €12 out of my own pocket! Let’s say that publishers of classical music recordings have found a way to survive, but it’s sometimes at the expense of the artists.
For the moment, it’s difficult to publish a recording without having a physical version on CD at the same time: otherwise, journalists are not interested; but in my opinion in five or ten years years this will no longer be the case.
Becoming a conductor? If that were to happen, I still have a lot to learn!
I also take care of our Koblenz music festival, IMUKO. In fact, our festival was called International Festival music Koblenz, but we realized that there was already one with almost the same name, hence the choice of this acronym, which as you say sounds a bit Japanese! We are now at the eleventh edition, the next one will extend over almost the whole year.

Pantheon

My favorite cellists? I really like the Russian school like Shafran, Rostropovitch but also the French school with for example Navarra, Fournier or Gendron.