Audio adventures full of energy and messages about current affairs

Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff has been a professor at the Bremen University of the Arts (HfK) since April 1, 2024. At her inaugural concert on December 5, 2024, 8 p.m., in the concert hall at Dechanatstraße 13-15, she will perform works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Ludwig van Beethoven and Henriëtte Hilda Bosmans as well as a solo work by Thorsten Encke, “Black Ice - for Solo Cello and Tape” (2018/20). Tetzlaff will perform the concert together with Prof. Martin Stadtfeld at the piano. Admission is free.

The evening will open with Ludwig van Beethoven's seven variations “Bei Männern welche Liebe fühlen ‘ (1801), which refer to a duet between Pamina and Papageno in Mozart's opera ’The Magic Flute” and will be interpreted in a dialog between cello and piano. “This is incredibly beautifully composed, a jewel of very, very communicative chamber music,” says Tanja Tetzlaff, ”each variation seems to represent a different prototypical person from the world of opera, the funny one, the sad one, the dramatic one, the one in love and so on. It's great fun to play.”
 

This is followed by Henriëtte Hilda Bosman's Cello Sonata (1919). “The composer was still completely unknown to me when someone happened to draw my attention to this work. I ordered the sheet music and was immediately hooked: this self-confidence of a woman to write a sonata with four movements that is totally independent in a music world that was very male-dominated at the time! Exciting music with a blatant amount of energy, sometimes brutal, but also beautiful. Late romanticism. I really want to make the composer known.”
 

After the break, things get contemporary with "Black Ice ”. Thorsten Encke hasseen avideo in which people skate on very thin, shimmering black ice. “Only if you skate certain curves in a certain way at a certain speed will you not break. That became a symbol of climate change for both of us,” explains Tetzlaff. In other words, the present-day feeling of being on thin ice.
 

In 2018, Encke composed the two middle movements, “Cracks” and “Clouds”, for a Tetzlaff CD; they were placed between the recordings of the last three Bach suites, whose musical phrases Encke plays with. In 2020, the composer added the first and fourth movements, “which completely shifted the work to the larger political level,” says Tetzlaff. “The first movement 'Preperations' is still full of anticipation and cluelessness, in the two middle movements you realize that the catastrophe is happening, the ice is breaking away. Quite apocalyptic music. The last movement, 'Afterthoughts', then resembles a lamentoso. I play this quarter-hour work with a tape for which I recorded six cello voices, mixed with natural sounds such as thunderstorms, rain and cracking ice,” explains the musician. “At the moment, I'm always trying to draw attention to the dangers of climate change in my concerts and appeal to people not to give up in the fight against it. It's not too late.” But a critical threshold for global warming has already been reached: according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the average global temperature from January to September 2024 was a record 1.54 degrees above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). “Yes, but I work with climate scientists, and they say that the knowledge is there, as is the ability to prevent the worst from happening, the only thing missing is the political will.”
 

The finale features Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Sonata in D minor, op. 40 (1934): a hit in the cello literature. Tetzlaff: “The great thing about Shostakovich is that he writes music that is easy to listen to and yet conveys his despair. That's why his works should be played again and again right now, because his life situation is currently being repeated so terribly in Russia and many other countries around the world - living, working and suffering under the oppression of a dictatorial state. Let's see how it turns out in the USA.”
 

What does the program say about Tanja Tetzlaff? “That I am versatile,” emphasizes the cellist, ”and that I play concerts in which the audience should not switch off, i.e. not just lean back and relax. No composer would have wanted their own music to be perceived in this way; everyone wants to tell exciting stories and make musical adventures come alive. I want to achieve what a good evening of theater can do, namely shake up the audience, stimulate them and perhaps let them discover emotions within themselves that they don't have or can't let out in everyday life.”
 

Biographical information
 

Born in Hamburg, Tanja Tetzlaff studied at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama under Professor Bernhard Gmelin and at the Mozarteum Salzburg under Professor Heinrich Schiff. She plays a cello made by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini in 1776 and was principal cellist of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from 1996 to 2006. One of her great passions is chamber music. Tetzlaff is a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartet and has performed worldwide since 1994 together with Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister, but also tours with other chamber music partners and curates the chamber concert series at Sendesaal Bremen. The cellist also performs as a soloist with numerous international orchestras and in solo recitals. Tanja Tetzlaff has been teaching chamber music at the HfK Bremen since April 1, 2024 and is a professor of cello: “I am in love with my class, I have accepted eleven Bachelor's and Master's students as well as one young student, with over 80 applications.”
 

Tanja Tetzlaff's inaugural concert as HfK professor of cello

Day: December 5, 2024

Time: 8 pm

Venue: HfK Concert Hall, Dechanatstraße 13-15

Admission: free
 

Performers:

Tanja Tetzlaff: Cello

Martin Stadtfeld: piano
 

Program
 

Ludwig van Beethoven: Seven variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen”, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera “The Magic Flute”, WoO 46 (1801),
 

Henriëtte Hilda Bosman: Sonata for cello and piano (1919)
 

Thorsten Encke: Black Ice - for Solo Cello and Tape (2018/20),
 

Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Sonata in D minor, op. 40 (1934)