Llewellyn Series: Cello with Umberto Clerici and Stanley Dodds at Llewellyn Hall

Berlin-based maestro Stanley Dodds returns to Canberra to conduct a very different program from the Opera Gala that he directed for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra last year. This time it's a varied symphonic program of works by Haydn, Peter Sculthorpe, Schumann and Brahms. Joining him as guest soloist in Schumann's romantic Cello Concerto in A minor is Italian-born cellist Umberto Clerici.

Newly married to an Australian wife, Clerici is now resident in Sydney, teaching at the Conservatorium of Sydney and playing as principal cello with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

"The cello that I'm going to play in Canberra is a Matteo Goffriller made in Venice in 1722," Clerici says. "The best types of celli in the world were made by Stradivarius and Goffriller. The Strads have an amazing, refined, bright sound and are more complicated to play than Goffrillers which have a big, broad sound but are very gentle to play. Pablo Casals started with a Stradivarius but then moved to Venetian celli because with them you are more confident of doing what you want. Sometimes a Strad does what it wants!"

Clerici's cello had belonged to Berlin's Kreuzberg Quartet until the 1970s and then to crossover musician Wolfgang Tiepold, who performed all sorts of electronic experimentations.

"When I bought it with a friend in Sydney last December it hadn't been played for 10 years," Clerici says.

"It was a little bit sleepy, and needing to be played."

But then, like in a fairy tale, it responded to the expert caresses of its master. "Yes, after five months it's woken up and I've just recorded a solo CD for the ABC using it."

And is the Schumann concerto the perfect piece to play after a romantic honeymoon?

"Well, no," Clerici says.

"I think that the Schumann piano concerto, also in A minor, would be a perfect piece. Schumann was very close to Clara when he wrote that. I would describe the cello work as a long search for serenity and calmness."

Stanley Dodds and the CSO's chief conductor and artistic director, Nicholas Milton, planned the program for this concert together. "Nick suggested the Sculthorpe and I said that I'd like to do the Brahms and he thought that it would fit very well," Dodds says. "Nick suggested Umberto for the Schumann and I'm very attracted to Haydn's overture to his opera L'isola disabitata, the work which will open the program, with it and Sculthorpe's String Sonata No.3 (Jabiru Dreaming) framing the Schumann concerto."

Dodds says the Haydn work is not played very often and that perhaps an Australian idea of an uninhabited island is rather different from the island that Haydn had in mind. "I hope the piece will be a discovery for listeners – another uninhabited island to add to the list of places to visit."

Dodds has not met or worked with Clerici before. "I can understand his wanting to settle in Sydney, which is such a vibrant arts centre," he says. He describes the Schumann cello concerto as a piece of chamber music for cello and orchestra.

"The way in which the cello part is interwoven with the orchestra is rare in its intricacy," Dodds says. "There are a lot of spoken elements in it which go beyond notation in a metric sense and it's a very personal conversation between interesting people on an emotional and subtle level. The conductor should not get in the way of those processes. 'Intimacy' is the key word.

"And what an honour it is for me to conduct the Peter Sculthorpe work."

Jabiru Dreaming is the only Australian work in this year's Llewellyn Series. Dodds explains the use of some well-known effects for the lower string instruments, bass and cello, in this piece.

"You call it the seagull effect. You slide with fixed hand from the top of the strings to the bottom. Due to the various harmonics you get what sounds very much like seagulls calling. There's something of a meditative, minimalist element in the work but if you look at the way in which it's put together it's very beautifully and deliberately constructed. There's sophistication in this piece and as a string player myself I feel absolutely at home with it."

Who better to conduct the final work on the program, Symphony No.3 in F major by Brahms, than a musician who has lived in Berlin for 23 years, working as principal conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and as a string player with the Berlin Philharmonic?

"This symphony is a bit like mother's milk to me," Dodds says. "I can remember playing the Brahms symphonies for the first time under Claudio Abbado and there were all sorts of things that the orchestra was doing which were not written in the music. Brahms finds a way to breach the divide between the intellectual and the emotional and the emotional response to this music is not culturally specific: it's a basic human response."