Kodály Reframed: crossing boundaries with imaginative ease

Cellist Suzanne Szambelan and saxophonist Hayden Chisholm: classical music with improvisations

I recently enjoyed an unusual small-scale concert in Paekakariki in the charming wooden St Peter's Church Hall. The programme was called "Kodály Reframed", its centrepiece a work I didn't know, Zoltán Kodály's Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello, Op. 8, premiered in 1918. The performers were remarkable Polish cellist Susanne Szambelan and New Zealander Hayden Chisholm, the latter based in Europe and touring the world as saxophonist, jazz musician/improviser and multi-instrumentalist.

In "reframing" Kodály's monumental and extraordinarily demanding solo cello work, the two musicians created atmospheric and intriguing improvisations around the three movements, a fascinating soundscape based on themes from the work. Chisholm used his alto saxophone, Indian sruti box, Māori instruments kōauau and pūtōrino and a brilliant, other-worldly kind of ‘throat’ or ‘overtone' singing.

Kodály wrote his Sonata after a period of several years collecting folk material with his compatriot Bartók. There were a few rough edges to Szambelan’s playing on a borrowed cello, but these seemed appropriate in her compelling performance of Kodály’s music. She found the drama in the work’s passionate or plaintive melodies, some accompanied by left hand pizzicato, the music’s layers and arpeggiated chords requiring frequent double stopping. In the demanding third movement her approach to Kodály’s adventurous cello-writing was dynamic, her playing fierce and fast, scrubbing the strings with the bow, deliberately folky in style. From this frenetic cello solo the two musicians moved seamlessly into another inventive improvisation, the mood calming with ethereal voice and kōauau before a final frenzied cello outburst.

Although it’s unlikely the Hungarian composer ever heard Bach’s Cello Suites, Kodály’s Sonata for solo cello invites some comparisons with these, played in Wellington the same week with folk-inspired verve by violinist Johnny Gandelsman.  The use of contrapuntal layers, double-stopped harmonies and a virtuosic range are all there, and Kodaly, like Bach, uses scordatura (re-tuning), in this case extending the expressive range by lowering by a semitone the cello’s two bottom strings. The Paekakariki programme reinforced the link by ending with improvisations on music that included the Sarabande from Bach's 5th Suite and the famous Prelude from the 1st.

The connection between the two concerts was for me also about easy boundary-crossing between classical, folk and improvised music. In this 21st century, where everyone can hear almost everything ever composed at the click of a mouse, musicians are re-thinking, re-imagining and re-interpreting music from the past in a multitude of enlightening and genre-crossing ways. And for us in the audience, perhaps we should set aside fixed expectations of beloved composers and their masterpieces, move with the music and enjoy a new dance.  

Kodály Reframed: Susanne Szambelan (cello) Hayden Chisholm (saxophone, sruti box, taonga pūoro and voice) Paekakariki March 1, 2024