For renowned British cellist Raphael Wallfisch, music always has been a family affair. He’s the son of cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who helped to found the English Chamber Orchestra. A survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, she made her way to London, where she married pianist Peter Wallfisch. Raphael made his New York recital debut in 1990 with his father at the piano.
In another generational turn, Raphael’s composer-conductor son, Benjamin Wallfisch, leads the West Los Angeles Symphony at Royce Hall on April 12 in a program of works by Rossini, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Weber and Johann Strauss II. The son conducts his father in the original version (there’s an extra variation and different ordering of the variations) of Tchaikovsky’s cello and orchestra classic, “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” and in Dvořák’s lovely “Rondo in G minor” and “Silent Woods.”
One of the finest cellists of his generation, Raphael Wallfisch, 61, is celebrated for his sumptuous, big-hearted tone. His latest albums for Nimbus Records, “Schumann: Works for Cello” and “Bloch: Schelomo/Voice in the Wilderness,” also display his knack for color and characterization, secrets he learned from his years studying in Los Angeles with the great cellist Gregor Piatagorsky.
“It was slow-cooking teaching,” Wallfisch said by phone from his home in London. “Things you understood more as you get on. He had empathy for different types of people and approached everybody’s needs differently. His house was full of wide culture, and you soaked up this older style of being.”
The upcoming concert at Royce Hall celebrates the 23rd anniversary of the West Los Angeles Symphony, as in past years marked by a free concert for the public. Artistic director Leah Bergman said the orchestra used to offer three or four concerts each year, but in order to maintain a high level of quality (previous guest conductors include Jorge Mester and Ángel Romero), she decided to put all the group’s resources into this one event. Bergman said it was Benjamin Wallfisch, now in his fourth year leading the orchestra, who suggested his dad as guest soloist.
Indeed, the professional relationship between father and son already was on solid footing. When Raphael was thinking of a conductor for his Ernst Bloch CD of Jewish music, he requested his son. “I know what he can do,” Raphael said. “He’s an excellent accompanist, so he listens. These were intricate pieces for any conductor, and he was incredibly meticulous about the ensemble.”
The CD is especially meaningful to the cellist, who grew up playing Bloch’s beautiful “Schelomo.” “I’ve known it since I was 10 years old,” Raphael said. “My parents had old 78s of Emanuel Feuermann playing it with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.”
The cellist dedicated the recording to relatives murdered in the Holocaust, including his grandfather and grandmother. Son Benjamin conducts his father and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in richly atmospheric and idiomatic accounts of Bloch’s “Voice in the Wilderness” (1936) and “Schelomo — Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra” (1915), the final work in Bloch’s “Jewish Cycle.” The disc also includes two rarely performed scores — André Caplet’s “Epiphanie” and an otherworldly account of Maurice Ravel’s “Hebrew Melody, Kaddish.”
“I knew that Bloch’s ‘Schelomo’ was a very important piece for my dad — one he felt incredibly close to,” Benjamin said. “I wanted to be sure to give him the launching pad to project all his ideas in a really visceral way. When we were recording the devastating climax, I felt immensely grateful and honored for the opportunity to share something like that with my father.”
Raphael Wallfisch said his parents didn’t talk about the past much while he and his sister were growing up. “My sister and I were brought up without much knowledge of the Holocaust,” he said. “We knew the bare bones, but our parents were so proactive about getting on with the future, knowledge came later. My father’s memories of separation from his family were too painful, but my mother was persuaded to write a memoir.”
Lasker-Wallfisch’s memoir, “Inherit the Truth,” published in 1996, explains how her skill as a cellist saved her life when she avoided the gas chamber by being selected as a member of the women’s orchestra of Auschwitz. “She will be 90 this year,” Raphael said, “and smokes at least 10 cigarettes a day. She still drives and travels and lectures widely about prejudice and tolerance.”
In keeping with family tradition, mother and son marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht by giving a concert at the Konzerthaus in Vienna in November 2014.
After his date with the West Los Angeles Symphony, Raphael travels to Beijing to perform Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. The concerto is widely considered the greatest for cello by a British composer, but Raphael thinks Gerald Finzi’s 1955 Cello Concerto is even more emotionally complex. The cellist recently made a short film about Finzi, still an unjustly neglected composer in the U.S., though Raphael’s unforgettable 1992 Chandos recording inspired other cellists to champion it. He performs parts of the concerto in the film, which will be available online in May.
Tone is a musician’s most personal signature, and Wallfisch said he’s delighted when anyone can distinguish his sound from another cellist’s. “The teaching of sound production has almost disappeared,” he said. “There are technical ways to improve sound, with color, vibrato, distribution of body weight. It’s an organic thing. You try to match the ideal in your head.”
West Los Angeles Symphony, featuring cellist Raphael Wallfisch, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Sunday, April 12, 7 p.m. Free admission. For more information, call (310) 873-7777
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.