Antonio Meneses was 10 years outdated when he and his 4 brothers had been assigned to the Municipal Theater Orchestra of Rio. Their father, a horn participant in Rio de Janeiro, determined that his youngsters ought to play stringed devices to extend their possibilities of employment.
By the age of 24, Mr. Meneses had exceeded his father’s expectations: he had received two main worldwide cello competitions, together with the Tchaikovsky Competitors in Moscow, and was on his technique to making recordings of Brahms and Richard Strauss with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. He was later recruited by Menachem Pressler to change into the final cellist within the biggest piano trio of the late twentieth century, the Beaux Arts Trio.
Mr. Meneses, who turned one of many most interesting cellists of his technology and an necessary determine within the musical lifetime of his native Brazil, died Aug. 3 in Basel, Switzerland. He was 66.
His dying in hospital was confirmed by his agent Jean-Marc Payson. Brazilian media reported that the trigger was mind most cancers.
Together with his critical, centered taking part in, singing tone, assured approach and absolute dedication to the sheet music, Mr. Meneses established himself as a musician’s musician.
He was wanted by conductors akin to Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado and Andrew Daviesin addition to by recitalists akin to the nice Portuguese pianist María João Pires, with whom he recorded Brahms and Schubert, in addition to the pianist Cristina Ortiz, his compatriot, with whom he recorded an unforgettable Villa-Lobos disc.
The calm, clear line he delivered in “O Canto do Cisne Negro” (“Black Swan Tune”) on this recording is attribute, informal and lyrical on the identical time. These had been the qualities that stood out to Mr. Pressler, in accordance with Mr. Payson, Mr. Meneses’ agent, who generally traveled with him.
“Menesses has an unerring approach, a sound of particular magnificence and a quest for musicality that make him an artist like few others,” Mr. Pressler as soon as said from him. (Mr. Pressler died final yr.)
He was a great associate in chamber music, those that labored with him stated, due to his unassuming, unassuming qualities. ”He had solidity, confidence, musical constancy,” Mr. Payson stated in an interview. “When one thing was in place” after a rehearsal, “he revered that. His colleagues at all times calmed down. He would not attempt new issues.
In interviews, he quietly makes it clear that he’s a servant to the music, not the opposite means round. “Not the instrument itself,” he stated softly irritation in 2013 to a Romanian TV interviewer who waxed lyrical about his cello prowess earlier than a efficiency of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. “It is simply one thing you utilize to make music.”
Mr. Meneses left his homeland at 16 to review in Germany with the nice Italian cellist Antonio Iannigro and lived the remainder of his life in Europe. However he usually returned to Brazil, the place all his brothers had been skilled string gamers, fulfilling what he referred to as his father’s “dream” for the household. There he had a compelling presence as a champion of each Villa Lobos and new works by Brazilian composers, and as a global star.
“What struck me about him was his concern for sound,” stated the composer Joao Guillerme the Ripperthe previous president of the Brazilian Academy of Music, stated in an interview from Rio de Janeiro. “There was a sort of perfectionism about him.”
In New York, he was notably credited for serving to to rejuvenate the Beaux Arts trio, which had already existed for greater than 40 years when Mr. Meneses joined it for the final decade in 1998.
“He does a fantastic singing line, skinny in a means that fits the trio’s repertoire, and completely assured,” critic Paul Griffiths wrote in December of that yr in The New York Instances in a evaluate of the reconstituted trio’s debut. He praised Mr. Meneses for his perception into Ravel’s trio, “taking part in the opening of the passacaglia as if it had been actual baroque music, with minimal vibrato, evoking the sound of the viola da gamba.”
If critics generally accused Mr. Meneses of being too cautious and exact — “The phrasing was unmusical, however her taking part in lacked expressive selection and long-line plasticity.” Donal Henahan wrote in The Instances for his New York Philharmonic debut in Schumann’s Cello Concerto in 1987—his technical expertise had been by no means unsure. The music press typically reviewed his information warmly.
“He manages to take care of a cautious class and understated management that reveals the innate great thing about the music whereas displaying the multifaceted parts of his personal artwork,” critic Caroline Gill wrote in Gramophone journal in 2015 on “Capriccioso”, an album of solo works. Rob Cowan, writing about Mr. Meneses’s recording of the Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata in the identical journal the next yr, stated that “each technical trick within the cellist’s playbook” was “pulled off with aplomb.”
Antonio Geronimo de Meneses Neto was born on August 23, 1957 in Recife, northeastern Brazil, the eldest son of Joao Geronimo Meneses and Rivanice Vieira de Meneses. His father performed within the Rio Municipal Orchestra and was the primary French horn participant within the Rio Opera Orchestra, and Antonio was given a cello as a baby earlier than he reached adolescence. By the age of 14, he was taking part in with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Janigro, on tour with the orchestra, heard him play and took him to Dusseldorf to review.
In 1977 he received first prize on the ARD Worldwide Music Competitors in Munich, Germany’s largest classical music competitors, and in 1982 performance of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations received him a gold medal on the Tchaikovsky Competitors in Moscow. Mr. Meneses later he joked that he acquired the award on the whim of a “bureaucrat” who commented that the best way was clear for him as a result of “the USSR had no diplomatic disputes with Brazil.”
After that, his profession took off and Karajan quickly enlisted him to report with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Mr. Meneses all of a sudden retired from live performance life in July after his analysis and died lower than a month later. He’s survived by his spouse, Satoko Kuroda; son Ottavio from his first marriage to Filipina pianist Cecile Licad; and three brothers, Eduardo, Ricardo and Joao. His different brother Gustavo, a violinist, died in 2021.
“I normally strategy the works lengthy earlier than I begin finding out them,” Mr. Meneses advised his biographers, the Brazilian journalists Luciana Medeiros and João Luis Sampaio, according to O Globo newspaper. “It is a sort of courtship that for me is essential to get to know him intellectually and spiritually.”
