Consortium Aurora Borealis is back in action and is excited to present ‘A Cello Celebration’ for your enjoyment, a special concert with an all-Italian theme. Cellists Peter Cosbey and Marc Palmquist join forces to charm you as they open our 47th concert season, performing duos and solos by 18th-century Italian composers Luigi Boccherini, Salvatore Lanzetti, Giovanni Battista Cirri, and Joseph Dall’Abaco, who were all remarkable virtuoso cellists in their day. Both virtuosic and lyrical elements will be explored, as the unique characters and timbres of the cello are exploited. We’ll also include music by famed composers Vivaldi and Viotti, as we move stylistically through the Baroque to the Classical period.
Marc recently retired after holding the position of Principal Cellist of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra for the past forty years. We wish him well in his well-deserved retirement! Marc has performed with Consortium since 1985, when he first arrived in town. Nor is Peter a stranger to Consortium, where he continues to enthrall audiences with his virtuosity, rich tone, and expressive style. Check out their bios in the About/Artists section of our website:
Both performers bring their considerable gifts and love for their instrument. We are delighted that they will share our concert platform in this tribute to the cello, even as they have shared musically as stand partners in the orchestra over the years.
We’ll now speak of our virtuoso-cellist-composers, once well-known, mostly unfamiliar today, but certainly worth discovering.
Our concert includes some true musical gems. Our hope is that you will be inspired to delve further into the music of these less common composers. Many of their works are to be found on YouTube, which is how I selected most of this concert’s repertoire, often following along with score in hand. Our virtuoso cellists held court or cathedral positions, toured, taught, composed, and certainly made their mark!
It was a real pleasure researching their music.
Domenico Gabrielli (1651-1690), our 17th-century composer, was nicknamed “Little Domenico of the cello” in the Bolognese dialect, and was one of the earliest virtuoso cellists. Bologna, especially the Basilica of San Petronio where Gabrielli worked, was an important centre of string playing. His short canon for two cellos opens our concert. It’s drawn from the very middle of Gabrielli’s 1689 collection of eleven experimental, rhapsodic ricercari, the first music published for unaccompanied cello. Gabrielli freed the cello from its role as a merely supporting bass, allowing it a new voice, with advanced techniques and idiomatically virtuosic writing. The cello’s popularity subsequently spread across Europe.
Joseph Dall’Abaco (1710-1805) was one of the greatest cellists of his time. He worked as cellist at the princely court in Bonn from age 19. After being called out for misbehaving, as “a rowdy gossipmonger, swindler and gambler”, he travelled to England and then moved to Verona, becoming a respected member of the Accademia Filarmonica, and remaining until his death in 1805 at the remarkable age of 95.
Dall’Abaco, who was the son and pupil of Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco, composer and court violinist, wrote nearly forty cello sonatas for his instrument, but we instead present two of his eleven demanding caprices for solo cello, numbers 4 in D minor and number 11 in the relative major key of F (we recall Gabrielli’s eleven unaccompanied ricercari!). Written in the sensitive, sometimes melancholy style of CPE Bach, J. S. Bach’s progressive son, they are short but varied in style, expressive and virtuosic. Ours are only four minutes each. Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was considered by many to be the greatest virtuoso of all time, carried on with the capriccio genre, composing and performing his challenging twenty-four caprices for solo violin thirty years later.
Salvatore Lanzetti (1710-1780) was a new discovery for me, thanks to my Venetian cellist friend’s recommendation. Lanzetti was born in Naples in 1710, the same year as Dall’Abaco, and studied there. He worked at Lucca, at the royal chapel of Turin, and the Teatro Regio orchestra, receiving high fees. As a true virtuoso, he toured extensively throughout Italy and Europe, enjoying fame and great success. He performed in Paris and spent much time in London, impressing everyone and promoting the popularity of his instrument. He also gave concerts in Sicily and Germany.
Lanzetti produced a cello method in 1756, the same year as Mozart’s father’s treatise on violin-playing. His technical innovations grew out of the virtuosity and elaborateness of his music, with extensive use of thumb position, intricate fingering systems, difficult bowings, and great use of double-stops. His music is very expressive, written in the new Galant Style. Peter will perform Lanzetti’s Cello Sonata in A minor, Op. 1, No. 9 from 1750. It is in three movements: Adagio, Allegro, and uncharacteristically concludes with an Andante. Marc will provide the supporting bass part.
Giovanni Battista Cirri (1724-1808), Italian-born cello virtuoso and prolific composer, studied in Bologna, joining its famous Accademia Filarmonica, spent three years in Paris, and moved to London in 1764, in time to play solos at visiting eight-year-old Mozart’s first public concert. Cirri carved out an enviable career, employed as chamber musician to one Duke, music director to another, moving in aristocratic and royal circles, performing for King George III and Queen Charlotte. Acclaimed by the public and fellow-musicians alike for his virtuosity, technical brilliance, and lyrical expressivity, he enjoyed immense popularity and international fame.
After 1780 Cirri returned to Italy, specifically to Rome and Naples, finally retiring to Forlì, his native city, to become its cathedral’s Maestro di Capella. We’ll hear an elegant cello duo from a collection of eight, intended for teacher and pupil, marked by technical sophistication and equality of parts, sharing the graceful, appealing melodies. It is his Duo in G major, Op. 8, No. 3. There are three movements: Allegro ma non troppo, a beautiful Adagio amoroso, and to close, an Allegretto.
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) is the most illustrious of our virtuoso-cellist-composers. Born in Lucca, Italy, he spent most of his life in Spain, working in royal circles. Stylistically, his music shares melodic elegance and charm with Cirri’s, his contemporary, and is written in the new Rococo or Style Galant manner, with occasional influence of Spanish guitar tradition. Boccherini was the greatest cellist in Europe of his time, often playing violin repertoire at pitch on cello.
He is mostly known today for his Minuet in E, played by countless young violinists as a solo at the end of Suzuki book 2. The original string quintet version appeared in movies, as in the museum scene of “Ferris Buhler’s Day Off”, evoking sophistication. Boccherini’s string quintet “Night Music of the Streets of Madrid” figured in “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”, the 2003 award-winning adventure film with Russell Crowe about life at sea during the Napoleonic wars. However, Boccherini wrote 500 to 600 other compositions waiting to be discovered, mostly chamber music, many with impossibly difficult cello parts. He pioneered the string quintet with two cellos, often treating them as cello concertos with string quartet accompaniment.
Boccherini admired Haydn and improved on his violin-dominated compositional technique by bringing the cello to prominence, with conversational style amongst equally-important voices. Boccherini wrote 38 cello sonatas, 7 cello duos, 13 cello concertos, a great many string trios, quartets, quintets, especially with two cellos, sextets, and guitar quintets. Our gifted cellist Peter Cosbey will perform Boccherini’s dramatic cello sonata in C major, G 6, in three movements: Allegro, Largo, Allegro moderato, supported by Marc on basso. He will be joined by Marc earlier in the program in a rousing Boccherini duo, G 74, also in C major, from which they will play the first movement, marked Allegro moderato.
Our concert also includes two Italian works not written by virtuoso cellists who were also composers.
Part One will conclude with Marc Palmquist performing the Cello Sonata in E minor, RV 40, by ever-popular Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi, whose dates are 1678 to 1741. Its four movements are a broad-breathed, lyrical Largo, an energetic Allegro, a calm, triple-metre, aria-like Largo, and a final vivacious Allegro, a typical slow-fast-slow-fast layout. This time Peter will provide the basso line.
The concert concludes with the Duo in C minor, Op. 29, No. 3 by Giovanni Battista Viotti, whose dates are 1755 to 1824, as he lived into the 19th century. Viotti, while not a cellist, was possibly the foremost virtuoso violinist of the later 18th century, and was a precursor to Paganini. He is mainly known for his challenging works for that instrument, composing 29 violin concertos and influencing Beethoven.
Viotti was admired by Mozart. He wrote a number of duos for two violins. but Opus 29 was actually written for two cellos, though taken over by violinists as well. The three movements of the third duo are marked Maestoso moderato e con molta espressione, Adagio, and Allegro agitato assai, much agitated, and is a fitting ending to an evening representing the best of Italian Baroque and Early Classic music for two cellos.
In keeping with our Italian theme, our ballot draw at intermission will be for a $75 gift card to Giorg Cucina e Barra, a fine-dining Italian restaurant noted for its exquisite food as well as for its vibrant, warm and inviting atmosphere.
Heartfelt thanks to our concert co-sponsors: Lakehead Printing; Tbaytel; Hilda Postenka; Jaro Kotalik & Louisa Pedri
We hope that you enjoyed your summer and that you are looking forward to another season of sublime music-making. Our opening concert is only the beginning, with six more fantastic concerts to go! Details of our upcoming musical offerings are given below in the link to our new Season Brochure, which we invite you to peruse.
Money-saving 2025-26 Season Passes are still available to order, giving you seven great concerts for $150 Regular; $90 Student (one free concert). They’re completely transferable, and add convenience as they’re all pre-paid, allowing you to enter by the fast-track line. Order at the concert or through our website. www.consortiumab.org/tickets
Saturday’s admission payment will be credited towards the pass.
There is an opening for new Board members. If you believe in what
Consortium does and would like to help us by serving in this way, please see Hilda, call 807-768-7420, or email us: inquiries@consortiumab.org.
Please now check out our beautiful 47th season brochure, artistically created for us by graphic designer Krista Hansen of eleven-seventeen.com, providing details of all our 2025-2026 concerts, as well as information about our organization.
There is a link to it on our website.
Find us on Facebook!
Next up, on Saturday, September 27, 7:30 PM, at St. Paul’s United Church:
Peter Shackleton, Principal Clarinettist of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, is joined by violinists Katie Stevens and James Moat, violist Patrick Horn, and cellist Peter Cosbey to perform Mozart and Weber’s celebrated quintets for clarinet and strings, beloved staples of that instrument’s repertoire. Mozart’s chamber work is exquisitely melodic, both mellow and mirthful. Weber’s is brilliantly concerto-like. Mozart’s elegant String Quartet in D minor, K. 421 leads off.
Thanks as ever to all of you for your interest in our musical offerings, and for your support!
Warmly,
Elizabeth