In the Light of the Pineapple Lamps Concert at the Marmorpalais, Potsdam
The most vivid insights into historical performance practice often emerge through direct, immersive experience.
In this concert, “In the Light of the Pineapple Lamps”, as part of “Königliches Leuchten am Heiligen See” run by the SPSG, Madeleine Bouïssou and I explore the sound world of Friedrich Wilhelm II’s private cello evenings, held in the "Palmensaal" or "Orange Saal" as he knew it, that he had specially built for chamber music within the grounds of his Marmorpalais in Potsdam.
By performing from parts from personal library of the King, using techniques uncovered through my doctoral research, and playing on instruments and setups historically appropriate to the late eighteenth century, we aim to recreate the intimate musical atmosphere of Friedrich Wilhelm's court in the 1790s.
The author Johann Daniel Friedrich Rumpf (1758–1838) described the hall illuminated at night by Ananaslampen — pineapple-shaped wire figures draped in yellow silk, each concealing a small oil lamp. Their light, filtered through the orange trees that lined the room, was said to “resemble gentle moonlight” and create “an exquisitely pleasing effect.” It was within this soft, golden glow that Friedrich Wilhelm II, one of Europe’s most accomplished royal cellists and a major musical patron, performed with his court musicians.
Through this project, we seek to bring back the intimacy and elegance of music as it might have sounded beneath the flickering Ananaslampen of the Marmorpalais.
Programme
Carlo Graziani (–1787)
Sonata in G major for Cello and Basso
Sonata in C major for Cello and Basso
Friedrich Wilhelm II (1744–1797)
Rondeau in E-flat major for Cello and Basso
Jean-Pierre Duport (1741–1818)
Sonata in D major, Op. 2 No. 1, for Cello and Basso
Franz Danzi (1763–1826)
Small Duos on Opera Melodies by Mozart for Two Cellos
Tickets available:
https://www.spsg.de/aktuelles/veranstaltung/koenigliches-leuchten-am-heiligen-see/event/tid/10974
Heinrich Grünfeld Project
The most vivid insights into historical performance practices often emerge through auditory evidence. In my current cello practice,
I am investigating the playing style and technique of
Heinrich Grünfeld (1855–1931), one of the Brahms circle cellists.
By emulating and embodying techniques heard in his early twentieth-century recordings, I aim to reconstruct his approach to the cello, gaining valuable insights into phrasing, portamento, vibrato, bowing techniques, and tempo flexibility.
As one of the earliest cellists to be captured on sound recordings, Grünfeld’s style offers a rare auditory link to performance traditions a century prior to my own generation. His playing not only reflects the practices of his contemporaries but may also preserve interpretative conventions from an even earlier era.
Mechanical Instrument Digitisation Project
Nothing could be more important to the musicians of today, than to hear recordings (or closely mimicking automations of performance) by eighteenths-century musicians.
Especially when those recordings come with the following statement by the well known and trusted lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber:
“Those clocks which I saw and heard at Mr. Kleemeyer's workshop in 1797 played in a way which left nothing to be desired. Since the Berliners know how to bring so much life into this inanimate, mechanical musician, these clocks would be useful for the history of taste in music for future times, by communicating the manner prevailing in our age to the ears of future generations.” - Neues Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (1813)
Through studying the Flötenuhren (Organ Clocks) built by Christan Ernst Kleemeyer (1739-1799) in the 1790s I am reconstructing interpretations pinned into the barrels of these mechanical instruments, including works of Mozart, Haydn and Pleyel, so that we may understand late eighteenth-century use of ornamentation, tempo, and articulation practices.
Galant Schema Studies
Galant Schema Studies is an initiative of Jonathan Salamon and Alexander Nicholls. As performers and schema theorists their aim is to bring the two worlds of performance and theory into one, to create historically informed performances and compositions. For more information please visit: www.galantschemastudies.com
