Cello

Walter Winslow's Such Boon Companions, premiered Sunday at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, is an exciting, multilayered and demanding work. It was commissioned by Charles Forbes, a cellist who specializes in new music and who played it Sunday, accompanied by pianist Alexander Panku. In a brief explanation to the audience before the performance, Winslow said the work contained two ideas: "a gentle waltz" and an "obstreperous motif" introduced by the cello. The work is about "how these very contrasting ideas are put together, how they interact, and how they reconcile each other.

The cello may be on the way to becoming what the viola was to composers in the 1970s: an intriguing voice, its expressive range still not fully explored. The cello, and an unusually able player, Scott Kluksdahl, gave four composers range for free imagination in the Network for New Music concert Sunday at the Settlement Music School. Kluksdahl played a solo work by Anna Weesner, Charles Wuorinen's Fast Fantasy with piano, Robert Helps' Quartet, and the premiere of Augusta Read Thomas' Passion Prayers for cello and small ensemble.

Lambert Orkis, pianist, and David Hardy, cellist, brought to a satisfying conclusion yesterday a valuable survey of Beethoven's complete works for piano and cello, a twin program they began at the Ethical Society Jan. 17. Traversing the range of the composer's three periods, the musicians offered the early (1798) Twelve Variations on the theme "Ein Madchen oder Weibchen" From Mozart's "Die Zauberflote," his middle-period (1808) Sonata in A major (Op. 69), and the companion Sonata in C major (Op. 102, No. 1)

Before playing last night, pianist Susan Starr announced that she and cellist Ulrich Boeckheler, partners in the first of two Mozart on the Square concerts devoted to all of Beethoven's works for piano and cello, had studied performance practices of the period to uncover historically accurate tempo markings. Starr said performers in Beethoven's time played tempos faster than 19th- or 20th-century performers, especially in movements marked allegro. She said the faster tempos had led her and Boeckheler to the discovery of "different ways to express the longer lines" of music.

Say the name Crumb, and you think of the cartoonist or, one hopes, that master music-maker, George Crumb. David Crumb composes, too. He's the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning George and his musical spouse, Elizabeth, of Media. David, 37, lives in Eugene, Ore., where he teaches at the university. Well, he taught composition last year. This year he's on a sabbatical provided by the Guggenheim Foundation, so he's composing full-time. David has no recordings available - the first is underway for the C.R.I.

Although she has never competed in a stakes race, Cello has attracted a lot of attention at Delaware Park by the impressive manner in which she has won both of her starts at the current meeting. Today, the big bay filly will be tested for class when she meets seven opponents in the $100,000 Obeah Stakes at 1 1/8 miles, a prep for the $600,000 Delaware Handicap on July 23. "She has so much talent and always responds to what we ask of her," trainer Steven Jordan said of the 4-year-old daughter of the Danzig stallion Strolling Along.

There seems to be no end to the parade of prodigies marching in and out of the Curtis Institute of Music these days. For many students, school days overlap with impressive and busy professional careers. Wendy Warner is one such case. Before graduating in 1993, she was already winning competitions and playing with major orchestras. Now 23, the cellist has dates with the orchestras of Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia under her belt, and seems poised for a major career. Tuesday night she returned to Curtis, playing sonatas by Grieg and Rachmaninoff in a recital with another Curtis alum, pianist Lambert Orkis.

Pianist Jeremy Denk and cellist Peter Stumpf gave an exuberant and exploratory recital Friday, the first of two weekend programs at Fleisher Art Memorial in which they presented all of Beethoven's works for cello and piano. Their work together glinted with a questing feel that emerged at the outset. The sense of proposal and answer, of discovery within established tempos or dynamics, and of risk within key moments in phrase and melody continually freshened the music-making. Denk was careful to reflect at the keyboard the robust and often complex sound created by Stumpf, associate principal cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Margaret Leng Tan, meet Tom Cora. Leng Tan, the Asian pianist whose repertoire of extended techniques proved riveting at her New Music America festival recital on Monday, has a worthy peer in Virginian Cora. He is a cello soloist, but one suspects they could create intriguing duos, based on Cora's extraordinary virtuosity during an NMA program at the Painted Bride Art Center yesterday. A beanpole of a guy, Cora's easygoing manner set people smiling before he even hooked up the cello to the amps and preamps that are also his stock in trade.

Ulrich Boeckheler, eyes closed and torso erect, gave David Crumb's Variations for Cello and Chamber Orchestra an ardent performance Sunday afternoon, assisted by the players of Orchestra 2001 and its leader, James Freeman. Crumb's six-year-old piece is a winner. Any cellist would be glad to get his fingers on Variations, which takes about a half-hour to perform and conveys so particular and gripping a sound world one is hardly aware of time passing. The music begins with a low flute intoning and repeating a tremulous motif.

Beethoven's cello sonatas are not often done as a complete, chronological cycle: They run too long for a single concert, but not long enough to fill two concerts without adding some of the composer's non-sonata cello works, diluting the sense of progression in his musical thought. When performed in close to optimum, single-concert circumstances by cellist Efe Baltacigil and pianist Benjamin Hochman on Thursday at the American Philosophical Society, the sonatas came off as a motley collection - verbose in the early works, oblique in the later ones, and with a clear-cut masterpiece in the middle, the Cello Sonata No. 3 (Op. 69 )

Janos Starker, 88, a Hungarian-born master of the cello who emerged from the devastation of World War II to become one of the most powerful instrumentalists of his generation, died Sunday at a hospice in Bloomington, Ind. Indiana University, where Mr. Starker taught for more than five decades, announced his death but did not disclose the cause. For decades, he was one of the most sought-after cellists in the world. He was venerated as a soloist and particularly as an interpreter of Bach, for which he received a Grammy in 1997.

This was no running with the bulls in Pamplona, but for dozens of cello lovers, the chance to mingle - and play - with professional musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra on Saturday was a thrill all its own. The "cello play-in" filled the typically spare lobby of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts with musicians of all ages and skill levels. Also on hand, of course, were their parents, grandparents and teachers, indeed anyone who loves the sound of a cello in classical, pop and holiday music.

WHEN YOU place the bow on your cello, do you ever dream of playing with the fabled Philadelphia Orchestra cello section? Well, now's your once-in-a-lifetime moment, open to beginners all the way to advanced musicians of all ages. A free cello play-in will give that opportunity for your dream, or that of some youngster you know, at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 15, on Commonwealth Plaza inside the Kimmel Center. First visit philorch.org/cello, choose your level: advanced/professional (Cello 1)

The thought, sound, and rhythm of Khalil Munir's hour-long theatrical memoir, 1 pound 4 ounces, are delivered not just in well-considered words but in the taps on his shoes. Munir, a Philadelphian in his late 20s, uses those taps to accentuate his story. You can hear them running, or making a heartbeat, or shooting a gun. His show through Sunday at New Freedom Theatre is an evolving version of the one he takes to schools and community groups, directed here by veteran theater artist Johnnie Hobbs Jr. and beautifully complemented by the cello work and side-stage dialogue of musician Monica McIntyre.

JERSEY CITY is rolling out the welcome mat, or throwing some more peanut shells down on the barroom floor, for the "women" of the "Jersey Shore. " Jersey's second-largest city has issued producers a permit to film a spinoff of the "reality" series featuring Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWoww" Farley . Filming is expected to begin later this month. Hoboken last week denied the permit, citing safety and quality-of-life concerns for residents. Not sure what it says about the residents of Jersey City that Snooki doesn't bring down their quality of life.

STUDENT RECITALS have bad reputations for being hard on the ears. Lucky for Philadelphia, students at the Curtis Institute are far more accomplished than the average 10-year-old learning the saxophone. The Curtis Institute is one of the most selective music institutes in the world; it enrolls fewer than 200 new students a year. The school's alumni are a Who's Who of classical music: violinists Hilary Hahn and Leila Josefowicz, composer Samuel Barber, opera soprano Anna Moffo and conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, to name a few. At any Curtis student recital, you could witness a nascent superstar like Lang Lang.

Though works such as The Rite of Spring are a natural part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts' Parisian-themed landscape, the infrequently heard Debussy piece Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp is taking on a Zelig-like role, turning up in the background and exerting a subtle influence on its surroundings. The piece is the starting point of Network for New Music's Friday concert and was an inevitability for Dolce Suono Ensemble's Wednesday performance at First Unitarian Church.

Wilbur E. Wamsley, 57, an expert craftsman who restored rare violins, violas, and cellos in his Haddonfield shop, died of cancer Saturday, Feb. 12, at his home in Cherry Hill. He started his business in his basement in 1991 and developed a reputation for skillfully patching splits, cracks, and gouges and mixing pigments and resins to create a varnish that looked centuries old. Mr. Wamsley, who had a black belt in karate, told The Inquirer in 1991 that in violin repair - as in the martial arts - concentration and contemplation are essential.

Clifford Roberts, 57, a master craftsman who created beautiful violins, violas, and cellos, died Monday, Sept. 6, at his home in Bella Vista from a rare neuromuscular disorder. Mr. Roberts' instruments are owned by members of the Juilliard and Mendelssohn String Quartets, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and several other ensembles. Soon after he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1990, John Koen bought a cello from Mr. Roberts. When Koen played it for a former teacher of his at the Curtis Institute of Music, David Soyer, "he approved because it was loud, and David liked loud," Koen said.