Podcasting: Creating a New Project Cello

Creating a Podcast 

The incredible tools that we have at our fingertips today allows us to create studio quality things at home. (Provided we have most of the right equipment.) One of those tools is the access companies like Spotify give us. One of Spotify's offshoots is its Podcasting Platform. There you are free to create and upload as much content as you wish. 

This platform's name is "Anchor.fm" by Spotify.

My own ambition, since I first found out what a podcast was, was to create my own. Now, I can happily say that I have done just that. You can listen to this podcast directly at Anchor.fm or at Spotify, where it is automatically uploaded to once you have done the initial uploading to Anchor. 

My own podcast is called Forgotten Cello Music. I'll write more about this what is behind this title in another post. Suffice it to say, the podcast is entirely about music for the Cello that has largely been forgotten or at least neglected.

Some Cellist/Composers who I have researched and played as a result and are featured in my 36 podcast episodes:

1. Georg Goltermann
2. Julius Klengel
3. Oscar Brückner
4. Joseph Hollman
5. August Nölck
6. Bernhard Romberg
7. G. Gabrielli
8. Giacobbe Cervetto

and there are many many more. 

Each episode has background music throughout. Sometimes it features entire movements or pieces and other times only excerpts from compositions of composers talked about on the podcast episode.

It is a dream of my come to reality. The enjoyment level is at a high. However, there are still relatively few people who listen and engage. The next part of my dream is to get thousands of listeners and likes, comments, engagement of some kind from at least a small percentage (1-2% I think would be great). 

Georg Goltermann: A Short Biography

Goltermann may not be known today by more than the cellists who were required to play his Concerto No. 4 in their mid developmental years. However, he was, by all standards of the 19th century a virtuoso cellist touring all over Europe. Goltermann seems to have been attracted to conducting, teaching and composing, which was cause enough to halt his busy playing schedule. As the author Margaret Campbell rather impudently mentions in her book The Great Cellists, Goltermann regretably stopped playing and devoted his entire life to composition, teaching, and conducting, to which he contributed little of lasting, worthwhile music for the cellist to play.

The above paragraph is about half of the all the material I could find on Goltermann using the book mentioned above and searching the internet. Although he was once a fairly played composer his style of simpler, readily accessible music (for the less technically advanced player) has fallen to the wayside. I have found some Nocturnes and other small pieces that do lend themselves to the intermediate student. They are not wholly devoid of creativity or melodic content (melody being the stronger element in his music rather) but certainly are not the creative masterpieces of Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, etc. This makes them perfect candidates for the less technically advanced students to show off their acquired level of proficiency on the cello. In other words, Goltermann's music is just in the niveau where one can appear adept and skilled without straining their limited command of the instrument.

In short, thanks to those cellists who wrote music for every level of learner. In this sense, Goltermann filled a much needed element in the repertoire.

Nocturnes and Concertos

Out of the choice of cellists who were themselves composers, I find it odd that Georg Goltermann has come to my attention. As a student I learned the well known Concerto No. 4 in G Major just like every other student in the intermediate stage of development. However, no teacher ever introduced anything else from that composer/cellist. It was almost as if Goltermann wrote one lone piece that he arbitrarily titled Concerto No. 4.

Now, some years after initially studying that concerto I have found a number of other works that have piqued my interested. Some Nocturnes and a few of his concertos have proven compelling enough to play through several times in a week. It seems he wrote eight concertos and a goodly number of nocturnes which include a half dozen opuses.

Though his music is rarely played, even by students--his music is generally a student-type of music--it was once on the regular circuit of performing cellists. One such name that most will recognize is the legendary Pablo Casals. There is even a recording of him playing the concerto no. 4! This I want to hear. I had a mind to record it simply because there were none to listen to. As I found out though, there is one extant recording, therefore I stand corrected. However, I think it would be good to record it for the sake of quality in the recording itself--not to be confused with the quality of playing.