Who is Sol Gabetta? Sol Gabetta is a world star who gets to perform as a soloist alongside the greatest orchestras. She counts Klaus Mäkelä, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Bertrand Chamayou among her musical friends and directs the Solsberg Festival. Over the past 30 years, she has already received an Echo Klassik Award, a Gramophone Award, a Diapason d'Or and many other honours. Gabetta teaches at the Musik-Akademie Basel and performs on a 1730 cello by Matteo Goffriller.
Which project at Bozar are you looking forward to most?
Sol Gabetta: “That’s really difficult to say, because I deliberately designed the programmes to show three very different facets of my musical life over the past 20 years. So I haven’t just selected individual projects – taken together, they’re a musical portrait of me.
The recital with Kristian Bezuidenhout (7 January) is a kind of rediscovery for me. In the past, I’ve almost always played with a modern grand piano. With the fortepiano, it’s a completely new listening experience. Our playing becomes much softer, far more differentiated, and it opens up new possibilities for the interaction between the cello and piano.
A concert with the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest (16 May) is always something special. I’d say it’s one of the best orchestras in the world! The combination of this orchestra, the conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Martinů’s cello concerto is nothing short of ideal – it’s always a highlight to look forward to.
And the concert based on the French cellist Lisa Cristiani (6 December) is a very emotional project for me. It will be the première of our tour and the climax of ten years’ research. A CD is coming out in October, and ARTE has made a documentary about this long journey.”
Watch the documentary here.
When did you first come into contact with Lisa Cristiani?
Gabetta: “I first encountered her as a child – I was playing Felix Mendelssohn’s Lied ohne Worte, which is dedicated to her. But I only really started studying her about ten years ago. I wanted to find out who this woman really was. It was a long, very intensive search that is now culminating, as it were, in the concert at Bozar.”
What is the key message you want to convey with the Cristiani project?
Gabetta: It’s important to me to show how significant 19th century repertoire is for the cello. It’s not just a matter of technical perfection or virtuosity in the traditional sense – it’s also about a very different kind of virtuosity, about poetry, depth. Lisa Cristiani was a pioneer, a woman who went her own way in a time when women were not allowed to travel alone or give concerts. She was passionate and refused to let barriers hold her back, and that’s inspiring.”
What do you think makes Martinů’s cello concerto especially worthy of attention?
Gabetta: “That’s an interesting question, because the concerto didn’t appeal to me much at first. Back then almost all the recordings were poor, and there are three different versions of the concerto with a lot of differences. It was only by studying the piece intensively that I really started to understand and love it. I have really made the piece my own. Today it feels as though Martinů wrote it especially for me. I try to convey this personal bond to the audience in my playing.”
Do you have memories of Brussels or Bozar that you would like to share?
Gabetta: “Yes, I really like playing at Bozar. The hall has fantastic acoustics for the cello. It’s suitable for both large and small ensembles. It’s simply a hall with a history, a soul. I always think it’s special to play in a place with so much allure.”
Discover the concerts of Sol Gabetta below. Or dive into the projects of our other portrait artists:
