Cellist Zlatomir Fung Sets the Trend
Credit: Marco Borggreve
Zlatomir Fung was the youngest to receive a Gold Medal in the cello division of the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, which launched his career as an artist for all seasons and reasons. But he was making musical waves long before by winning numerous awards that include Young Concert Artists International Auditions, George Enesco International Cello Competition and Schoenfeld International String Competition. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and recent Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship award is more icing on the cake for this 24-year-old who began Suzuki method studies at age three in Corvallis, Oregon. When mother and father, a professor of mathematics and software engineer respectively, moved to the east coast, Fung continued at New England Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School.
His in demand global concert schedule includes recital and guest appearances, Artist-in-Residence with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2023-2024 season and debuts with New York Philharmonic under Leonard Slatkin, London Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall and La Jolla Chamber Music Society. In California, upcoming performances include Elgar’s cello concerto with the Sacramento Philharmonic on November 18.and a solo recital in Santa Barbara on January 28 with Britten’s cello sonata and Marshall Estrin’s Cinematheque (2022).
What makes Fung’s onstage presence even more dynamic is the works he performs. “I think a recital program, like a multi-course meal, should have a sense of contour and contrast in its different parts. As a listener, you don’t always want to be consuming the main course, like the major standard repertoire sonatas, as that can become too heavy after a while. The fun part is pairing those wonderfully substantial masterpieces with the smaller works, which can be appetizers, palate cleansers or desserts,” says Fung. This music is food for the soul analogy explains why his repertoire is wide-ranging and includes traditional composers such as Beethoven and Brahms, the esoteric in Leo Ornstein (Six Preludes for Cello and Piano), Yuri Shaporin (Five Pieces for Cello and Piano), Gaspar Cassadó (Suite for Cello Solo), George Walker (Sonata for Cello and Piano) - and composers of our time in Judith Weir’s Unlocked (based on American Spirituals) and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s YTA 111.
“With each recital program I create, I want to tell a coherent and satisfying story for the audience. My teacher, Richard Aaron was always passionate about having us, his students work on new or obscure pieces. Practically every week he’d come in and say, ‘Look what I found.’ That mentality of always looking for new and exciting works of music to interpret rubbed off on me and today, with the internet, it’s more convenient than ever to encounter hidden gems.” Among the innovative works by composers of our time is whisper concerto by Katherine Balch, of which Fung gave a world premiere with the Dallas Symphony in the Spring of this year. Fung remarks that this piece has expanded his vocabulary of cello playing and that having worked with Balch once before, was familiar with her “tastes and wild imagination for unconventional sonorities and many unorthodox techniques,” he adds.
According to Fung, some of the techniques in Balch’s score require “playing the strings with a wooden chopstick, the windshield wiper sound and the white noise sound, created by moving the bow extremely fast across the string, without pitch.” While I’ve heard some similar musical effects going on at the annual Ojai Music Festival, not every performer can pull off music that is quintessentially unique and kind of out there. Fung is able to convince us that pieces like whisper concerto are worthy material and deserve to be programmed. “When approaching a work like whisper concerto, the challenge is finding deep musical purpose in the often-unusual techniques, making them essential parts of the storytelling rather than just gimmicks. Of course, this challenge is also a source of joy. While practicing these newer technical ideas, one can feel that they are inching closer to the composer’s emotional vision of the music, which is one of the greatest satisfactions you can feel as a musician.”
Bach’s unaccompanied suites for cello represent a bread and butter (gluten and dairy free, if you prefer) staple for cellists to study and perform. Fung mentions that these suites are touchstones, have been a vital part of his musical life and become richer with each visit. “Part of their power lies in their being for cello alone. It’s a challenge to write music for a single cello that creates an entire musical world for the listener. It’s the closest we can get to the kind of satisfaction that pianists feel when they play Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and all other great solo piano composers. Bach could do that for solo cello, one of the marks of his genius.”
Fung’s interesting comparison is perhaps something pianists take for granted when playing solo pieces, as the repertoire is so vast and peppered with revelatory works like Beethoven’s sonata, Op. 110, the mystical vibes of Liszt or Chopin’s etudes. Of course, some piano works have been arranged for cello and piano such as Franck’s violin sonata (trans. Jules Delsart), which Fung includes in his programs. He explains that certain areas of focus regarding his interpretation of Bach’s suites are constantly changing. “Currently, I am thinking about the first suite as a narrative on the harmony of nature and the planets and the universe. In contrast, the fifth suite seems to me a personal monologue, a rumination on tragedy. Currently, I’m practicing the fourth suite as an expression of the tension between order and chaos, and the fifth suite as an evocation of the joys of ensemble playing – even though it’s for one instrument, that’s one of the reasons it’s so challenging. But these are just examples, a snapshot of my thinking in time, and of course they will evolve.”
Fung comments that Bach’s cello suites are eternal and will continue to resonate with audiences – as will this cellist’s insightful perspective about music being a bridge from where we were, are and headed. “In general, Bach and the music of the past will always be relevant because performance tradition holds a tension between the past, present and future. The past is in the music that is already written, the present is in our performances of that music and the future is in all the great music that has yet to be written but will be informed by past and present music. Every time I sit down to play, I feel inspired to be in the middle of this great symmetry.” As trendsetter and traditionalist, Zlatomir Fung’s approach seems just as timeless as his playing.