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.
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.