“Cellissimo” at Mount Wilson

REVIEW

Cécilia Tsan and Allan Hon play Barrière, Bach, Gernot Wolfgang, and Offenbach, Mount Wilson Observatory

DAVID J BROWN

Two eminently listenable three-movement suites by French composers, one Baroque and one Romantic, book-ending an acknowledged masterwork and a world premiere, plus a much-loved encore, and all in a unique venue… what’s not to love? And lest anyone think that adjective to be unwonted hyperbole, has any other observatory in the world repurposed a telescope dome as a concert hall, besides its existing function?

From tentative beginnings in 2017, the summer seasons of Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome at Mount Wilson have gone from strength to strength (always excepting the “covid year” of 2020), and for 2025 there are more, and more varied, concerts than any previous year, masterminded as ever by Artistic Director Cécilia Tsan and Mount Wilson Institute Trustee Dan Kohne.

So on the last Sunday in June a capacity audience, a good half being first-timers, seated itself on the platform that surrounds the 100-inch Hooker telescope for this season’s first classical concert. Dan Kohne set the scene, noting that this day, June 29, was the 157th birth anniversary of the observatory’s founder George Ellery Hale—and then there was the ever-memorable engineering spectacle: the dome’s giant observation shutter slowly cranking open far overhead, and the whole structure rotating around the stationary telescope (the machinery still operating perfectly in its 108th year), carrying the audience and performing platform into position for ample light without direct glare.

If one word could sum up the performances by Cécilia Tsan and Allan Hon, respectively Principal and Assistant Principal Cello with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, that word would be “generosity”—not only in how they listened to and responded to each other through the many opportunities for give-and-take that the music enabled, but also in the spacious tempi that the dome’s resonant acoustic tends to require.

Jean-Baptiste Barrière.

Both the initial Andante (with its first half repeat exquisitely hushed) and the Prestissimo finale of the Sonata No. 10 in G major of Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707-1747) were notably more relaxed than some performances to be found on YouTube. Though famous in his day as a virtuoso cellist, Barrière was not a prolific composer, with just four collections of cello sonatas to his name plus a handful of other pieces. Today his works seem little-known, judging by his sparse representation in current CD listings, but this performance showed that we’re missing something: the two-minute central Adagio, in particular, was a perfect miniature of soulful, galante introspection.

Jacques Offenbach, c.1850.

The output of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was at the opposite extreme. Before he embarked upon his nearly 100 operettas he had a whole first career as almost as prolific a composer for the cello and as a virtuoso on the instrument—a recent complete recording of just his cello duos extends to seven well-filled CDs. The last item on Tsan and Hon’s “Cellissimo” program was Offenbach's Duo Op. 51, No. 1, and if the literally dozens of others are anything like as charmingly varied and tuneful as the three movements of this one, then they also need to be brought into the light!

Gernot Wolfgang.

Local SoCal resident Gernot Wolfgang (b. 1957) originally wrote his Ready to Rumble! in 2019 for two contrabassoons, but this was the first performance in his new arrangement for two cellos. If it lost some of the pawky rudeness of the original (cf. YouTube) in its jazzy, off-kilter rhythmic elements, then in the hands of Tsan and Hon it gained lyrical warmth in the slower, more ruminative sections.

Ready to Rumble! in its cello duet version was a fun jeu d’esprit, and clearly enjoyed by audience and players. However, it had the misfortune to follow—as would have been the case for just about any work—a piece that's not only a supreme creation for the instrument for which it was originally conceived but also what has been called one of the greatest achievements of humanity in any medium.

J. S. Bach, c.1720, around the time of
the composition of his Partita No. 2.

This was  the Ciaconna fifth movement of J. S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. Nonetheless—thought it may be sacrilegious to say it—for this listener at least the sense of sheer strain in almost any violinist performing the Ciaconna tends to militate against reacting to the piece as an emotional experience besides its impact as a tour de force of ingenuity and execution. But this was almost shockingly not the case with the cello duo arrangement by Claudio Jaffe and Johanne Perron as played by Cécilia Tsan and Allan Hon.

With the music’s elaborate strands separated out, clarified, and judiciously shared between the two instruments, plus their deep, rich sonorities, and together with the masterfully judged pacing and subtle rubato of the whole, Tsan and Hon delivered a powerfully expressive account shorn of any distracting effortfulness. To take just one instance of their control and shaping, the careful broadening and emphasis at the Ciaconna’s mid-point when Bach brings us back to the opening theme made the moment extraordinarily powerful and moving. It seemed to say “this is where we came from, but though we have come far, there is still so much more…” They delivered.

Finally, there was that much-loved encore piece, Ennio Morricone’s radiantly sentimental main theme from Cinema Paradiso, played from the heart by Tsan and Hon. Under its spell it was easy for the cinematic mind’s eye to see the movie’s concluding montage of romantic clips (click here or on the image above)— spliced together in secret by the old projectionist Alfredo—as flickering shadows against the steel panels, struts and beams of Hale’s great dome—truly a Coelestium Paradiso.

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100-Inch Telescope Dome, Mount Wilson Observatory, Sunday 29 June 2025, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Photos: The performance: Todd Mason; Barrière: IMSLP; Offenbach and Bach: Wikimedia Commons; Gernot Wolfgang: Composer website; Cinema Paradiso clip: YouTube.