Cello star returns to Orchestra Iowa for 2 concerts, rural outreach

The wait is over. Maestro Timothy Hankewich has found the right guest artist so he finally can conduct Antonin Dvorak’s Concerto for Cello.

“In my entire career, I’ve never conducted this work, even though it is such a standard,” Hankewich said. “We in the business would call it a ‘warhorse.’ And one of the reasons I have delayed in programming this, is I was waiting for a soloist who would not only just play it well, but play it at an extreme high level. Enter stage right: Zuill Bailey.”

Bailey also will open the Masterworks concert with Dvorak’s “Silent Woods” on Saturday night at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids and Sunday afternoon at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts.

Ties near and far

“Over the years, Zuill has become quite a close friend of mine,” Hankewich added.

That friendship is one of the reasons Orchestra Iowa was able to entice the Grammy-winning cellist back to Cedar Rapids. His ties to the area run deep, beginning with his 2019 appearance in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City with Orchestra Iowa, in which he performed Cedar Rapids native Michael Daugherty’s award-winning four-movement cello concerto, “Tales of Hemingway.”

Bailey was a guest artist on that work with the Nashville Symphony in 2015. The live recording won three Grammys in 2017: Best Solo Performance (Bailey), as well as Best Classical Compendium and Best Contemporary Classical Composition, adding three more coveted wins to Daugherty’s collection.

“(Bailey) also stuck with us during COVID,” Hankewich said. “He was a regular guest of mine during my ‘Happy Hour’ segments (on Facebook Live). And it’s no secret that last year he came to Cedar Rapids for my birthday recital together. So he’s got a very special place in my heart.”

And while friendship “paved the way” for Bailey’s return, “a lot of the guest artists that we have been enjoying these past seasons were cultivated during the pandemic, when they had no work,” Hankewich noted.

Bailey has amassed an international resume and reputation over the years. A native of northern Virginia and the son of musicians, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a master’s from New York’s Juilliard School.

He serves as a professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso, and is the artistic director at festivals and educational programs in Texas, Alaska, Washington state, and Arizona. Along with guest appearances with orchestras around the world, he also has appeared in multiple television shows at home and abroad, including the HBO series “Oz,” NBC’s “Homicide,” and BBC’s “In Tune.”

Concert programming

It’s uncommon for Orchestra Iowa to begin and end a concert with pieces by the same composer, placing another work in between, but Hankewich said it works particularly well this time.

He described Dvorak’s “Silent Woods,” which runs about eight minutes, as “one of the most gorgeous pieces I know. … Then we have the sort of lighthearted symphony of Shostakovich. And then we end with the big granddaddy of all cello concertos, the cello concerto.”

The Shostakovich Ninth Symphony is the wild card — one Hankewich called “a misleading symphony.”

The Russian composer was under pressure “to produce something to declare the glory of the Soviet Union,” with both his fifth and ninth symphonies, Hankewich said. The latter was written in 1945, near the end of World War II, and the Soviets were expecting something “huge and loud and in your face,” Hankewich said.

But the arts were becoming more liberalized, and Shostakovich did just the opposite.

“He wrote a piece that was lighthearted. The middle movement still touches on the trauma and the sorrow of the Second World War. But the other movements in particular are humorous and sarcastic and subversive, in that he is laughing and poking fun at the Soviet political machine. ...

“(With) 80 years of hindsight, it’s very obvious that he was being a political dissident by writing this piece,” Hankewich said. “Eighty years later, the overarching message is as valid today as it was back then — poking a musical stick in the eye of a Russian dictator.”

Dvorak cello concerto

After intermission, the second half of the program is “all about” Bailey, Hankewich said. The Dvorak piece, written in 1894, is full of iconic moments that other composers must wish they had thought of, Hankewich added.

“The first movement is such a dramatic statement,” Hankewich noted.

“The second movement, in particular, I wonder if his trip to Spillville had a direct influence on, because he was just starting the sketches for the cello concerto when he visited our area. And to me, the second movement sounds a lot like a pump organ — something that was actually quite a common instrument in many households in the world. But for some reason, evokes in my mind’s eye, the sounds that he heard when he was in Spillville.

“And in the last movement, there’s this reverential, almost spiritual component about it. I remember reading that the original soloist who he had in mind to play the work urged Dvorak to change it into something more flashy. They had a real artistic battle over that. Of course, it’s Dvorak’s piece and he won. And I’m glad he did,” Hankewich said, “because the piece ends with such reverence and such a spiritual and holy manner. It is just transfixing in a way that no other concerto that I can think of replicates.”

Bailey will bring his own artistry and interpretation to the piece.

“There’s lots of people who play that concerto,” Hankewich said. “There are very few people who can make it their own. (Bailey) brings a flair and a passion to the work, but it is distinctly different from what Yo-Yo Ma would do. That's what makes great music-making so exciting. It may be the same notes, but the spirit of this piece changes from artist to artist.”

And that’s what makes the piece challenging for Hankewich.

“For the soloist, it’s definitely a marathon,” he said. “For the conductor, it’s nonstop terror. My job is to make sure the orchestra is tailored to his vision of the work. And that means being able to turn the orchestra on a dime to make sure the orchestra is flexible with his phrasing and in balance, and all this comes together in such a short period of time.

“So accompanying somebody puts a greater weight, in my view, on the conductor’s shoulders, because it adds this extra dimension of sensitivity and flexibility. When a conductor is leading a symphony, for example, it's really more about the give and take between conductors to musicians, musicians to musicians and orchestra to audience. It’s much more fluid and easily managed dynamic. Where I think if I really do my work right, and have the orchestra really reflect Zuill’s vision, it takes split-second timing and sensitivity and micro-adjustments.”

Rural outreach

Bailey also will get to exercise his love for teaching and sharing music with students while he’s in Eastern Iowa. Orchestra Iowa has received a prestigious $10,000 Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which will support a three-part youth educational outreach program in rural Eastern Iowa — Columbus Junction and West Liberty, in particular, according to Caitlin Hartman, the orchestra’s senior director of patron engagement.

“These communities have large immigrant populations who are largely employed in the farming and meatpacking industries,” she noted. “The program celebrates and teaches about Iowa’s proud immigrant history, as well as its immigrant present, through music. Touching on Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s time in Iowa in the 1800s and bridging that to the young students’ modern day immigrant experiences, the program teaches how meaningful connection happens through music. It incorporates the science of sound as well, fitting in nicely with modern educational curricula.”

The students and their families will be invited to attend the orchestra’s “Silent Woods” concert, too.

A few weeks later, Hankewich and a string quartet will meet with those students, “to initiate what will hopefully be a long-term relationship,” he said.

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com