How cellist’s ‘eye-opening’ Schumann moment was inspired by a famous vanitas painting
- When Hong Kong-born cellist Trey Lee saw the 1648 painting Vanitas Still Life it gave him new insight into a Robert Schumann work he was struggling with
- ‘I couldn’t believe I could look at a painting and it could tell me so much about a piece of music,’ he says
Vanitas paintings were a type of still life popular in the 16th and 17th centuries that symbolically depicted the transience of human existence. One prominent example, “Vanitas Still Life” (1648), by Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Jansz. Treck, hangs in the National Gallery in London.
Hong Kong-born, Berlin-based cellist Trey Lee Chui-yee, who has worked with orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia and Munich, Stuttgart and London chamber orchestras, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
It was about 25 years ago. I was in London because I was going to study there, but I ended up not doing so because the teacher I wanted to work with decided to take a sabbatical. I arrived in London with nothing to do, found out that the museums were free and, as a poor student, decided to take advantage.
Before that I’d been studying in Boston, in the United States, working on this piece by Robert Schumann (Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op. 102). The first movement has this subtitle Vanitas Vanitatum, which is from a biblical saying.
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Not being a Christian myself, I had no idea what it meant. My teacher just translated it as “vanity of vanities”, so I just thought it was about vanity.
I always found that movement very difficult to play. There are interruptions in phrasing that are very disturbing. It starts off very jaunty and then keeps getting interrupted by three low notes that have nothing to do with the melody.
I had so much time in London’s National Gallery that I stood in front of every painting. When I saw this one, I thought, “Oh, vanitas, what is that? It sounds familiar.” The accompanying text went on to explain what it was and what the objects in the painting mean – the skull, the hourglass and the other objects from everyday life.
I realised it was not just about vanity but about the ephemerality of life. No matter what our station in life, we all end up the same, which is dead.
I realised it was what those three notes in the Schumann piece meant. The beautiful melody was interrupted because at the end, there’s always death. It made so much sense. Now, when I play those three notes, they have so much power.
It was really eye-opening to me in terms of my relationship to that one piece I’d been playing, but it also opened my eyes to the interconnectedness of different art forms.
I’ve had so many experiences with art that have continued to inspire me in my music
I couldn’t believe I could look at a painting and it could tell me so much about a piece of music. I’d been interested in visual art before but not in this way – it had so much relevance to my art form.
I’ve lived in Cologne, Madrid, Amsterdam and now Berlin, where there’s so much art that was created simultaneously with a lot of the music that I play.
In the Old National Gallery in Berlin, for example, I saw Caspar David Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea (1808-10), which depicts a lonely, singular figure in front of the ocean, and I realised that it’s a visualisation of so much of the Romantic era music I perform.
I’ve had so many experiences with art that have continued to inspire me in my music.
Trey Lee is artistic director of Musicus Fest 2023, a series of concerts in Hong Kong between November 11 and 26.
