It’s not easy conducting from behind a cello. Which is why Umberto Clerici doesn’t really do it.
As an acclaimed cellist, Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor still performs in Australia and overseas but not usually in Queensland, aside from the odd star turn at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville.
In Brisbane we see him wielding the baton, but audiences are in for a rare treat soon as our maestro gets back behind the cello for the Umberto & Natsuko Season Closing Gala, with two performances in the Concert Hall at QPAC on November 15 and 16.
Natsuko is QSO concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto, also a talented violinist. The pair have played together beyond QSO but in Brisbane they are usually fixed in their positions – he as conductor, she as concertmaster. But soon they will be cutting loose as solo artists for us.
Before his conducting debut with Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2018, Clerici was a renowned cello soloist, making his debut in Japan at the young age of 17. He then served as principal cello at Teatro Regio di Torino and later with Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2021.
The forthcoming concert will be his first major outing since it was announced that he will be extending his role with QSO until the end of 2027. So, he’s looking forward to putting down the baton for at least part of the concert when he will attend to Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor (Double Concert) and Strauss’s Four Last Songs.
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“Natsuko and I have played a lot together at various chamber music festivals,” Clerici explains. “She plays a lot of solos.”
How will the orchestra cope without a conductor or concertmaster, however briefly?
‘I’m a little bit afraid of it,” Clerici says. “I think at the first rehearsal people will be a bit panicked. You just have to trust that everyone can be autonomous. I often try to open their minds.”
If he is tempted to try to conduct from behind his cello, a 1722 instrument made by Venetian master Matteo Goffriller, he will have to check himself.
“When you play the cello, you have your back to them so it’s impossible to conduct the way you might be able to at the piano,” Clerici says.
As well as a treat for local audiences, who have come to appreciate his robust and florid conducting style, this will be an experiment of the sort Clerici enjoys. He says he sees his job as trying to create a scaffolding and environment in which the orchestra can stretch itself and grow, even if that means being occasionally uncomfortable.
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The concert will bring to a close a year in which the orchestra explored romanticism.
Clerici will swap baton for bow when he tears through a cello solo alongside QSO’s showstopping violin superstar in Brahms’ Double Concerto. While there’ll be two virtuosic performers on stage, it’s not a competition, he stresses, it will be more a musical conversation.
Clerici is back to the podium in Four Last Songs, where special guest Australian soprano Eleanor Lyons will soar over Strauss’ exquisitely atmospheric melodies, which will follow Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman. The concert begins with Schubert’s Rosamund Overture.
Three of the Richard Strauss songs are based on poems by Herman Hesse and there will be many in the audience who grew up on Hesse, a favourite of the hippy generation with books such as The Glass Bead Game and Siddhartha. The Strauss songs will mark “a farewell to romanticism” as the orchestra prepares for 2025 – a year in which co0llaboration will be a hallmark.
Maestro Clerici points to QSO’s highly anticipated 2025 co-production of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in February with the globally renowned contemporary circus company, Circa, as well as alliances forged with Queensland Conservatorium, University of Queensland, Brisbane Chamber Choir, Opera Queensland and Queensland Ballet.
The fact that Clerici remains in high demand as a cellist of international repute has been key to attracting world-class soloists and conductors to Queensland.
“Bringing the world to QSO and QSO to the world is often part of the same process,” Clerici says. “QSO has a certain buzz, with new members joining the orchestra, a growing audience, a committed concertmaster and more high-calibre guest conductors and renowned soloists, which all help to grow the reputation of the orchestra, nationally and internationally.”
Under Clerici’s baton, Queenslanders have been treated to new and innovative works such as Paul Dean’s Symphony No. 3 The Great Barrier Reef, which launched QSO’s bold new regional touring program, as well as the captivating Become Ocean by John Luther Adams at the 2024 Spirit of the Wild concert. He also enthralled audiences in 2023 with Don Quixote and other ambitious concerts.
His experimental and innovative approach will again be on display in 2025 with boundary-pushing concerts including Shakespeare’s The Tempest with esteemed thespian John Bell and Shostakovich Ten, performed alongside an on-stage screening of William Kentridge’s film, Oh To Believe in Another World.
Clerici says he plans to continue exploring the broader philosophical themes of his first three seasons while refining how the orchestra connects with its community.
QSO Chair Rod Pilbeam says the maestro “has brought dynamic and ambitious leadership to QSO, and we are pleased to support him in delivering his creative vision”.
“As chief conductor, he has worked diligently to ensure QSO is an orchestra for everyone, to welcome audiences across the state to experience and enjoy a vast repertoire of transformative music.”
qso.com.au