Richard Rognstad
When WyoHistory.org published its history of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra in October 2021, the editors realized that there were many more people available to contribute their thoughts and memories of that organization. The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming was also interested, and offered to contribute funding to support an oral history project to capture more information on the history of the symphony.
The Casper College Western History Center transcribed most of these interviews. In addition to being available here, at WyoHistory.org, the audio files plus transcripts are also available at the Western History Center and the American Heritage Center.
Thanks to the interviewees for donating their time; to the Casper College Western History Center for transcribing the audio files; to Kylie McCormick for transcribing some of the audio files; to the American Heritage Center for funding the project; and to the trustees of the George Fox Fund, Inc. for donating the use of its Zoom account.
Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project
Rebecca Hein interviewing Rick Rognstad, June 10, 2022
Date transcribed: July 8, 2022
Rebecca: Thanks for making yourself available.
Rick: Absolutely.
Rebecca: Let’s start with you giving your name and your instrument, or your instruments, and how you came to play it or them.
Rick: Okay, I’m Rick Rognstad, officially Richard. I started playing cello in fourth grade in Casper Wyoming, in the school system, and then I switched to bass, and later back to cello, and later back to bass (laughs)
Rebecca: (chuckles)
Rick: So, I played them both I guess. Yeah.
Rebecca: Okay and did you kind of settle on cello, then, or-played both?
Rick: Well, in fourth grade when I wanted to, they went and encouraged students to start by playing instruments, I wanted to play oboe, which my father did and my sister did, but my mother nixed that, she wanted something that was a little more mellow, so I did cello, until I think ninth grade. Jack Middle- the high school orchestra director- needed a bass player and suggested that I do that and that seemed to suit me very well, and so I became a quite serious bass player. Then switched back to cello, oh, my second year of undergraduate school, thinking I wouldn’t go into music but would play chamber music, and there’s a much greater literature for cello than there is for bass.
Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. Great, and let’s go on now with your post-public school education.
Rick: Okay. I had bass lessons for a year. [For] undergraduate school, I went to New College in Sarasota, Florida, and I had double bass lessons with Gaston Dufresne, who had actually gone to the Paris Conservatory, and then was hired by Koussevitzky to play in the Boston Symphony. [Serge Koussevitzky, 19th and 20th century Russian conductor, composer and double-bassist] He played there for 30 years and then retired to Florida. And then, there was a string quartet at New College, and when I decided to switch to cello, Christopher Von Bauer, a Werner [Leonard] Rose student from Julliard, [Leonard Rose, a 20th century American cellist and teacher] was the cellist in the quartet at that time, and he began my lessons, and then he left to take a job in one of the University of Washington schools, and Peter Rejto had his first cello job, and was the cellist in the quartet my senior year. [Rejto is an American and Australian cello soloist] And then, after I graduated, I came back to Casper and met Curtis Peacock, and he suggested that I go to University of Colorado and study with Jurgen de Lemos, who was principal [cello] of the Denver Symphony. And I tried to make a career as a cellist. So, I guess I was reasonably successful. In 1986, when I got my doctorate in musical arts degree, from CU, I came to the University of South Dakota where I conducted the orchestra, [and] played cello. The second year I was here they started a faculty piano trio, which was great. It gave me a chance to play chamber music, which of course, was one of [The instrumentation for a piano trio is violin, cello and piano]my great loves, and also it allowed us to, or allowed me, to sort of push the trio in the direction [of] my research interest, which was in American music, and we ended up recording three CD’s, issued by Albany Music, which was, the American music and the pieces that I chose. … And then, in 2002, I started getting twinges in the second finger of my left hand, and, uh, it turns out the arthritis was, y’know, taking that finger. I had surgery in 2003, and I was able to pick the angle of the finger, and it-it works quite well, but at that point I resigned from the trio here, and became the bass teacher only. I taught cello and bass at University of South Dakota until then, and then I became kind of a serious bass player again until I retired. I did a recital at the International Society of Basses Convention in 2015 in Fort Collins, Colorado, of the pieces that I’d found and transcribed for bass. [To transcribe is to arrange a musical composition for some instrument or voice other than the original] Then I retired and I went back to playing cello ‘cause I love the Bach Suites, who doesn’t? [Six unaccompanied suites for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach] And again arthritis kind of got me, and when my fourth finger [pinky], got to the point where it hurt when I put it down, and I just had to give up playing. So. But I still have a very light touch keyboard and I can play a little Bach in the morning on it everyday.
Rebecca: So, at some point, did you play in the Casper Youth Symphony?
Rick: Yes. I did. I started cello in fourth grade and my recollection is I joined in the fifth grade-or the sixth grade, and continued until I became a bass player in the Casper Civic Symphony my junior year in high school. So, I did play in the Youth Symphony and Marty [Edmund Marty, brass instructor at Casper College] was the conductor at that time, and he was a great deal of fun. We went on tours. Other players were, your sister Cathy, Alan Becker, and there were a few others whose names I don’t remember. I was perennially last chair, because I never practiced. I was mainly into baseball my first twelve-fourteen years of my life I guess.
Rebecca: I see, I didn’t know that.
Rick: Yeah. And then, after I switched to bass, it seemed to suit me much better. As I’m sure you know, having written a wonderful article on the history of the orchestra in Casper they sponsored a scholarship to the Congress of Strings [high-powered string camp for advanced high school and early college students], and it turns out that Alan Becker won the year before I did, and his parents, wanting to support such a wonderful experience, endowed a second chair, or a second person to go, and that year … it was my junior year in high school, and I was encouraged by my parents and Bob Johnson who was at one time principal of bassoon in the Casper Civic Symphony and he played piano. And they encouraged me to audition, and I … made a fingering chart when I was trying to play this Vivaldi second cello sonata on the bass. I was trying to play the first two movements for the audition.
Rebecca: Mhmm.
Rick: And I made a fingering chart, and, on the bass, because it’s tuned in fourths, if you land yourself in fourth position, where the first finger plays a note an octave above the lower open string by scooching half a step up and half a step back, you can actually play every chromatic [half steps; the smallest interval in Western classical music] note in a scale. [“Positions,” on a stringed instrument, are numbered according to what pitch the left index finger is placed on, on the fingerboard.] And so, kind of figured that out and ended up winning one of the scholarships to the eight week Congress of Strings which was on the USC campus in Los Angeles. [It] was a great experience. (clears throat) I think it basically, was responsible for me going into music. It was the first time I was in a peer group that appreciated it, and Barry Green was the teacher there. He was principal [bass] of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and later on went on to write the Inner Game of Music and a number of other books on … the psychological aspects of performance. He worked with me on the Dittersdorf Concerto in E Major, the first movement, and then I entered the Casper Symphony sponsored Young Artist Competition in my senior year, and ended up [winning]. I think I sent you the program for that.
Rebecca: Yeah, you did.
Rick: [They usually selected] one winner, and Wilma? Romer? Ruth Roberts [Roma Ruth Roberts] who was a wonderful pianist, she’d come from Texas but was living in Lander, and she played the first movement of Beethoven’s first Piano Concerto, and I played Dittersdorf, [bass concerto] which was not a really comparable piece, but, anyway, they decided to have two winners. I’m not sure if there was some sort of hometown bias for me or not. But at any rate, I played that first part of the Dittersdorf Concerto. And then went back to the Congress of Strings the next year. [Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, 18th century Austrian composer; a concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment]
Rebecca: So you were at Congress of Strings twice?
Rick: Yes, mhmm.
Rebecca: Wow! What an opportunity!
Rick: It really was. It was just transformative. I mean, it was such a long stretch of the summer, and I don’t remember I’m afraid. I don’t, y’know, but I played under Josef Krips, and Sixten Ehrling, and some really wonderful conductors, but again, I don't really remember. [Josef Krips, Austrian conductor and violinist; Sixten Ehrling, Swedish conductor and pianist] But I remember we played, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima [by Krzysztof Penderecki, 20th century Polish composer], Bartok Divertimento; two pieces that stick with me to this day. [Bela Bartok, 20th century Hungarian composer]
Rebecca: That’s very interesting. I know, when I was at Congress of Strings, it was [at the University of Washington] in Seattle, and we did the Philadelphia [here Rebecca meant to say Tchaikovsky] Serenade [Serenade for Strings by Pytor Illich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer] and we did the-
Rick: Wow! Yes.
Rebecca:-and we did Verklärte Nacht [Transfigured Night, Opus 4 by Arnold Schoenberg, 19th and 20th century Austrian-American composer], and maybe we did other things but I don’t remember.
Rick: Yeah, hmm.
Rebecca: Well, very interesting, yeah, go ahead.
Rick: Okay. Now. There’s one-one thing, we’re not going back and thinking about the Casper Civic Symphony at that time. I first became aware of it when I was very young. My father was playing oboe in the orchestra and then later became English horn when Dox Carr became principal oboe, but he would go early every Sunday afternoon at one o’clock before the three o’clock concert, and hang- he had permission to- string a wire from one side of the auditorium, in the high school, to the other, and he would suspend his speakers from that, and then he would record all of the concerts. If he happened to be playing in the concert, he would have someone else do it, but he had all the concerts taped and I think they had parties after the concerts and listened to the recordings, and it was a good time. But, when I first joined the orchestra, I’ll never forget it, and you mentioned actually, Till Eulenspiegel [Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks by Richard Strauss, 19th and 20th century German composer and conductor (son of Johann Strauss of “Blue Danube” fame.)] that Ed Marty ventured, y’know, that piece, and that was, perhaps, my first experience with the orchestra, and I can remember, just, my jaw hanging open, and not only could I not play the notes, with Richard Strauss being famous for audition passages for string players, but I couldn’t even tell where we were in the music half the time. (chuckles) [Edmund Marty, a French hornist, was brass instructor at Casper College, and conducted the Casper Civic Symphony from 1962 to about 1970]
Rebecca: (chuckles)
Rick: And, when I first joined, there were five bassists in the section. And there was one, and he’s listed in that program I sent you. His name was K.D. Van Wagenen, listed as emeritus. He was at the first rehearsal I went to, but he left it at about break time, and I asked someone, maybe Bob Johnson, who was a friend of the family, and a good friend of mine also, about him, and apparently he’d first played violin in the orchestra and then when his fingers slowed down, probably due to arthritis, he became a violist, and then when, supposedly, when he couldn’t hear too well, he became a bass player. Which is sort of apocryphal, you know, it was always the tradition that the violinist who couldn’t really do it became a violist and the cellist who really couldn’t do it became a bassist- (chuckles)
Rebecca: (laughs heartily)
Rick: But, I must say that, Van Wagenen, to finish the story about him, everyone liked him very much and respected him. I could tell that. And he socialized during the rehearsal breaks.
Rebecca: So-so when you say that- let’s say the Casper Youth Symphony which you joined in sixth grade, do I have that right?
Rick: Yeah. I think so-
(Inaudible talking over each other)
Rick: Uh, I don’t know exactly when.
Rebecca: Yeah. You got lost a lot. Did you have a stand partner, or a near neighbor that could help you find your place-
Rick: Well I got lost in Eulenpiegel when I joined the Casper Civic Symphony. It was my first rehearsal-
Rebecca: Ah.
Rick:- and I had never seen music of anything close to that level of difficulty.
Rebecca: (laughs heartily) You know, I’ll tell you something, let’s clarify for the historical record. That’s the Strauss Tone Poem, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks?
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: Which, I saw that when I was researching for this symphony article I did for WyoHistory.org and I thought, you know, Ed Marty must’ve-since he was a French horn player-maybe he just couldn’t resist programming that piece. I don’t know-
Rick: (laughs heartily)
Rebecca: -but talk about intrepid.
Rick: Yes. I mean, that was, very daring, and I-
Rebecca: Do you recall how it went? Sorry.
Rick: No, I’m afraid I don’t. But I think that by the concert I could at least tell where we were in the music. And when it got to slow notes then I could play those- (chuckles)
Rebecca: Yeah. Wow. (chuckles) That’s a funny story. I still marvel that so long ago in the history of the symphony, that anybody programmed a Strauss tone poem. I mean, [Till Eulenspiege isl ... supposedly the easiest, but none of them are ever easy.
Rick: (chuckles) Yes, I know. (inhales) I never conducted an orchestra that was anywhere close to being able to play one. And so my only familiarity with them is when I played-subbing- I played the piece again, the cello part, subbing in the Denver Symphony when I was in grad school, but other than that and then studying the cello parts to the tone poems. I had heard his name, and it was asked [for] by every cello [audition] committee for the cello job. And so, that’s the extent of my familiarness with Strauss.
Rebecca: I have another question. You’re, more or less, a contemporary of my late sister Cathy who was born in 1950?
Rick: Yes. That’s when I-
Rebecca: Okay. Well, do you remember the Martys hosting parties at their house called “come as you are'' parties, in the early morning?
Rick: Well-
Rebecca: You’d get a call and everybody knew it was gonna happen, but nobody was supposed to get dressed. They were all supposed to just show up in their bathrobes.
Rick: (laughing sharply) I do not remember that I’m afraid.
Rebecca: Ah, okay.
Rick: (continues to chuckle)
Rebecca: Well, I know from my research on the symphony article that I did for WyoHistory.org that Ed Marty was just devoted to the Youth Symphony.
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: He published a newsletter for parents and I think, you guys-did you say that you guys went on tour-
Rick: Yes. Mhmm.
Rebecca: -because, do you remember where you went or anything about those concerts?
Rick: No, I’m afraid I don’t. I mean the concerts were universally held in high school gymnasiums. I think, but-
Rebecca: Right.
Rick: I’m afraid that I don’t remember any specifics.
Rebecca: Okay. Let’s see, so, the Casper Civic Symphony, I didn’t catch when you first became aware of its existence?
Rick: Oh, I was very young. For some reason my father would take me when he hung the speakers up before the concerts. I was probably 10, I guess 10 years old. Something like that.
Rebecca: Okay.
Rick: Before, where I was maybe, playing the cello by then, but, I don’t know; maybe he-he, maybe my mother wanted me to- he kept me out of the house or something, but-
Rebecca: (laughs heartily) I’m surprised she didn’t go to the concerts.
Rick: Oh, yeah, she did. She would take me and my sister to the concerts-
Rebecca: uh-huh.
Rick: And it’s a good thing because, you know, that NCHS [Natrona County High School] auditorium was huge and even a decent crowd looks kind of paltry, but I recall the audience attendance was quite good. All those years.
Rebecca: Okay. Do you recall what I would term, a high point, of any kind- something- the most memorable performance, either from Youth Symphony or Civic Symphony? Or your solo appearance as the winner of the Young Artist Competition, or whatever?
Rick: I don’t remember too much about that, just one thing. My mother, when I was very young, first-second grade–my sister was older–three and a half older than I was. She was taking piano lessons and became a quite fine pianist. I was also then taking lessons. I would have to wait for hers, and this poor woman- I don’t know her first name, but I knew her last name was Zealstorf- she’d gone to Oberlin Conservatory [Music Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio] and she was the teacher in Casper. A great teacher, and I would hide behind the music and do all kinds of-
Rebecca: (outburst of laughter)
Rick: -awful things. And she was so relieved when I begged my mother and she allowed me to quit after a year or two. But- at any rate- she went to that concert where I played the bass and, uh, my mother said the look on her face was priceless. She just couldn’t believe it.
Rebecca: (laughs)
Rick: That that little imp, that little pesky kid, could, uh, actually ended up doing something in music. My most memorable concert, I think, and this, I don’t even know when it was, but Curtis and I became very good friends, Curtis Peacock who was, conductor [of the Casper symphony] for many years, and, as I said, he urged me to go to the University of Colorado, and he was, at that time, doing a DMA [Doctor of Musical Arts] there. I think he abandoned it, but for one of his recitals he asked me to play a trio recital with him, and that was great. And then later on we played chamber music together a number of times. And the most memorable time was, there was a [good] pianist in Casper. I don’t know if she still is there, uh, Janet Ahlquist, I-
Rebecca: I-I don’t know if she’s still there, but I remember.
Rick: Anyway, she and Curtis and I played trios, and I took some trio concerts. But then, also one time we played the Beethoven Triple Concerto at NCHS, and that was, so that’s my most memorable concert.
Rebecca: Beethoven Triple with a piano accompaniment?
Rick: Yes. It’s uh, it’s piano, violin, and cello.
Rebecca: With orchestra, so what-
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: So did another pianist play the orchestral reduction, or?
RIck: No, no, it was with the Casper- I think, by then- it was maybe the Wyoming Symphony.
Rebecca: Ah.
Rick: Yeah, so we were the soloists.
Rebecca: Okay. Do you have other memories that come to mind, or anything else to add?
Rick: Let me look over the notes I’ve made here. I think, again that program that I sent you from the 1968-1969 Casper Civic Symphony season-
Rebecca: Right.
Rick: Uh, looking at the personnel, it sort of gives, I think, a good image of the symphony orchestra. Uh, y’know for instance, Glenn Vliet was principal clarinet, but the other clarinets were listed as Lee Harris, Todd Kaye and Linda McMullin. All who were in my senior class. So, I think he was kind of grooming them, and probably alternating, putting one in for one piece, one in for another, but sort of furthering their education at the same time as filling a need for the orchestra.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Rick: And I think most of the sections, the wind sections, were anchored by very competent players, but then they would also teach and then kind of groom other players from the high school, or maybe Casper College to fill in the other spots.
Rebecca: I think that happened in the strings section too.
Rick: Oh yeah. Mhmm.
Rebecca: It was a good system.
Rick: It was, yeah. And then when I went to grad school, Curtis became the conductor. He would import students from CU [University of Colorado, in Boulder] to be imports for the orchestra, and I did that many times.
Rebecca: So, you were at CU and you would come up as an import?
Rick: Yes. In your [WyoHistory.org] article, that picture of the Casper Civic Symphony with Curtis conducting-
Rebecca: Mhmm.
Rick: I’m sixth chair cello there. I noticed that and I had a beard and long hair and whatever, but, yeah.
Rebecca: Yeah, I recall that. Okay. I’m looking over my notes here. Let’s go back a little bit, just for clarity ‘cause I was not familiar with some of these names. At Sarasota you had bass lessons with, who was the teacher?
Rick: Gaston. G-A-S-T-O-N,
Rebecca: Okay.
Rick: Dufresne. D-U-F-R-E-S-N-E. Fres-nee. It would be the phonetic pronunciation.
Rebecca: Okay. That was at Sarasota?
Rick: Mhmm.
Rebecca: And he was your bass teacher?
Rick: Yes. That first year. And then I made the switch back to cello.
Rebecca: Right. That was in undergrad?
Rick: Yes, mhmm.
Rebecca: Okay, and who did you study with- I think you said Peter Rejto?
Rick: Yes. At undergraduate school. Peter Rejto was the cellist. In the quartet at the school.
Rebecca: Okay.
Rick: And his father, [Gabor Rejto] who was the long time cello teacher at University of Southern California, felt that Peter’s cello wasn’t up to what it should be, and so from Viseur and Sons he found some Italian cello, and Peter got me to buy his cello. Which was a Sebastian Viole, nephew of Jean-Baptiste, the great French maker, and it was a beautiful cello-to look at- it didn’t really play as well as it looked, but it was-
Rebecca: (Mournful “oh”)
Rick: I lucked into it very much.
Rebecca: Yeah, it’s interesting how instrument purchases happen that way sometimes.
Rick: It is. In grad school, my teacher was Jurgen de Lemos.
Rebecca: Oh yeah. I remember taking a lesson from you, to pick your brains about what you were learning from him.
Rick: Gosh. I’m afraid I don’t-
Rebecca: It was a long time ago.
Rick: Yeah.
Rebecca: Yeah. So you studied with Jurgen de Lemos for how many years?
Rick: I went to graduate school probably in eleven years. Yeah. I think it was eleven years. I got a master’s degree. I was in and out a little bit the first years, but then I found- I knew that I loved to play the cello more than anything else, and so I was fortunate my grandfather had done pretty well in construction, and my father convinced him to bypass-he convinced his father to bypass him with his inheritance, and so my sister and I had some money, and it wasn’t imperative that I find a job right away. And so I was able to kind of hang out and pursue what I really wanted to do. And then at one point, I had most of the work-uh, the doctorate in music degree in cello performance done, and so I just, at that point I became a good student, and buckled down, and finished it.
Rebecca: Uh-huh. And, for a DMA in performance you did not have to do a thesis, you only had to play a recital, is that right?
Rick: Six Recitals.
Rebecca: Woah!
Rick: Yeah. Uh- (chuckles) people have told me since that I should’ve shopped around. (laughs heartily)
Rebecca: (laughs heartily back)
Rick: That’s more than is required with others. There were four actual playing recitals. Two solo, two chamber, and then there were two lecture recitals from which I was supposed to write a substantial, forty-fifty paged papers and then give that. So, it was a little more academic than I think some-(trails off)
Rebecca: Yeah. I, don’t know that I’ve heard of a degree program where, a performance degree program, where a person had to do that much writing.
Rick: Yeah. I may be wrong about that. Maybe, I had to do papers accompanying the recitals. I think that’s correct, yeah. I didn’t have to do it, so there were six playing recitals, yeah.
Rebecca: Yeah. And has that [writing] come in handy for your teaching, in your career at South Dakota?
Rick: Yeah, it did. I mean, the research- there was a wonderful man at University of Colorado named William Kearns, who was one of the founders of the American Music Society, which, it was first named the Sonneck Society, after Oscar Sonneck, who was one of the first, I think, curators of the music portion of the Library of Congress. But, at any rate, he guided me into American music, suggesting I make a bibliography of American cello music. And it just proved to be an immensely fruitful area of research. My specialty was composers who worked between the Civil War and the First World War, and there were just thousands and thousands of musicians from this country who traveled to Europe and studied at the conservatories there. Three thousand to Leipzig [Germany] Conservatory alone, between 1850 and 1900. And interestingly, half of them were women, which is, kind of, given the tenor of those times, that was very surprising.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, but I found, doing that research, I found pieces that are piano trio and ... then also I found pieces that I thought were very nice pieces that I transcribed for cello, and then, later on, for bass. Sonneck was the first one who really took American music, research, seriously, I think, and he was born in Germany but he came to this country, I think as a child.
Rebecca: Right.
Rick: I’d been a member of the Sonneck Society as it was then [called], which is … [now] … the American Music Society. And the piano trio here, we played at conventions of the American Music Society three or four times.
Rebecca: Okay. So, from CU-
Rick: Yes?
Rebecca: After completing your DMA, what did you do next?
Rick: Well, it so happened that a friend of mine, also a cellist, he’d been at CU when I was there, had decided to leave his job at University of South Dakota, and to pursue a doctorate in conducting, at, I think the University of Washington, and so he frankly called me, shortly after I’d, flown to Charleston, South Carolina, to audition for an orchestra, to play an audition for an orchestra job there, and I played poorly, and didn’t get the job and came back, and he called me, and said, “Would you be interested in a college job?” and it sounded good, and so I came out and thought I’d stay a year or two, but ended up staying for thirty.
Rebecca: Yeah, orchestral auditions are really hard.
Rick: Yeah.
Rebecca: You have to learn all of these excerpts that I found so unrewarding that I couldn’t make myself do it. That’s why I went into university teaching.
Rick: Yeah. Well. Yes.
Rebecca: Did you really-
Rick: I, uh,
Rebecca: No, go ahead.
Rick: No, go ahead, it’s fine.
Rebecca: Well I was gonna ask you, did you really put in all of the time learning the- I mean not all of the excerpts are unrewarding- but I’m thinking about the Strauss Tone Poems, like Don Juan, that one is always a standard. Opening to that one.
Rick: Yeah. Sure.
Rebecca: But did you actually force yourself to practice that as though it was a concerto, and master it?
Rick: Well, uh,-
Rebecca: (chuckles)
Rick:-I don’t know about mastering them, but, uh, (chuckles) Jurgen de Lemos guided me through those parts, as part of my lessons with him. I was kind of forced to play them.
Rebecca: Well that’s probably a good thing.
Rick: I guess. (laughs heartily)
Rebecca: (laughs heartily back)
Rick: Well I was- I mean I guess they ended up being great etudes. Perhaps, but, uh, (chuckles)
Rebecca: Ha, ha!
Rick: Yeah.
Rebecca: I take it, you didn’t really enjoy that at the time?
Rick: No I didn’t. At the time, no.
Rebecca: Yeah, well. I had a friend, when I was in the Puerto Rico Symphony; she was a gringa, and she had been trying hard to get back to the upper 48, and she worked really really hard on these excerpts, and she said she auditioned for some professional orchestra in Texas, I don’t remember which one-
Rick: Mhmm.
Rebecca: She said she played a note-perfect audition, and did not get the job.
Rick: Woah!
Rebecca: And that’s when she learned that something else was needed. I don’t know if she ever found out what, but, maybe they had somebody else in mind. Who knows?
Rick: Yeah. Who knows? Even playing behind screens and stuff, a student can certainly tell- I mean, a teacher can certainly tell a student’s playing.
Rebecca: True.
Rick: De Lemos told me something that I found - he was principal [cello] of [the] Denver [Symphony] and so he was-
Rebecca: Right.
Rick: -he was in all the auditions [on all the audition committees], and he said that often [there was] a section that had a lot of people who had great fingers who could play notes, but didn’t have technically big sounds. So then they would favor someone who maybe couldn’t get all the notes as well, but had this immense sound to sort of balance the section. And, so it could’ve been something like that with your friend in Puerto Rico.
Rebecca: So, you’re saying they favored the people who had a big sound?
Rick: Yes. That’s what the section, overall, as a whole, had lacked. And I’m not sure that that ever happened in Denver Symphony-
Rebecca: (chuckles)
Rick: But, yeah, De Lemos had auditions, when he literally, he was preparing me for auditions, and when he was talking about them he said that you don’t know what you’re going into. I mean, it could be that if you have huge sound and you miss one note that you’re out because they need people who can get every single note. And there’s-there’s no feedback which is the hard thing also, yeah.
Rebecca: Yeah, and you know, to me that sounds like the luck of the draw, this business of wrong notes because an accident can happen to anybody at any time.
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: In performance.
Rick: Absolutely.
Rebecca: I know when I heard, I think it must’ve been Lynn Harrell [American cellist], that was it, play live with the Chicago Symphony, in one of their summer concerts. He smeared a couple notes, and I wasn’t too surprised ‘cause I knew that recorded music misrepresents what-
Rick: Right.
Rebecca: - live music is really like, but it was still an eye-opener I guess. (laughs)
Rick: (laughs back) Yes. In that regard, when I got to University of Colorado, or South Dakota, faculty there, they had a wonderful faculty development program, and I spent some additional summers going to work with Fritz Maag, who had taught; [was] a wonderful Viennese cellist, who was kind of the new-
Rebecca: Hmm.
Rick: -teacher at Indiana University to Starker [the late Janos Starker, a Hungarian-American cellist; one of the greatest cellists in the world]. And several times I just went to - after he retired - I just went to where he was teaching at summer music camps, in Tennessee, but the first summer I met with him I did go to Indiana University, and Starker was giving master classes [public lessons to individual students] there. And it was phenomenal. I mean, first of all, he’s sitting there smoking a cigarette even though there’s no smoking. He had someone else-
Rebecca: (chuckles)
Rick: Matthew brings the cello in and opens the case- (laughs)
(Both laugh heartily)
Rick: So, he didn’t have his cello with him, but then, I watched him every afternoon for a couple of hours, for five days, and he would sometimes say “No. No. You go like this.” He’d get his cello and he’d play the passage, and it was perfect. First time, every time. It was just phenomenal.
Rebecca: Was it?
Rick: Yeah.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Rick: I mean, Maag, De Lemos, would occasionally fudge a note the first time. Maag would say, in a wonderful Austrian accent, “Don’t wait- don’t worry, I’ll get it this time.”
Rebecca: Ha ha ha ha!
Rick: (huge laugh)
Rebecca: Now Maag was-
Rick: Pardon?
Rebecca: No, go ahead.
Rick: No go-
Rebecca: I was gonna ask, Maag is a familiar name-
Rick: M-A-
Rebecca: Is he the guy that-
Rick: Yes?
Rebecca: Gee. Didn’t he write a bunch of etudes?
Rick: Oh! Yes! He ... found that he was writing down, in pensive little exercises for his students time after time. So he put them all together. I think it’s called cello exercises or something? But he referred to it, and his students referred to it, as “the Bible” because you did your Bible study everyday, and-
Rebecca: Ha, ha.
Rick: He had a wonderful system of playing the cello, and arpeggios, and he did my playing so much good. It was really phenomenal. [An arpeggio is a a chord played note-by-note, rather than all three or four notes of the chord being played simultaneously]
Rebecca: Well, as I recall, his etude book was very very systematic. [Rebecca is mistaken here; she’s actually thinking of Rudolf Matz, a 20th century Croatian composer]
Rick: Oh, yes. Intensely so, and uh-
Rebecca: Yeah.
Rick: -Yeah. Well, he had this [book] for beginning thumb position, I remember that one well. He would have you play just open D and A [strings; an open string is one played without being stopped with a finger], and then whack your thumb down, like a fifth above the open strings, and then slide it back to where they’re playing E and B, and slide it back up an octave higher, the E and B above the first harmonic [the halfway point on the string, which, when touched, will vibrate an octave higher than the string’s regular pitch]. And then he’d ... take your thumb off and then whack it down to that place—and it wasn’t until I played Arpeggione Sonata that I realized that you really need to just know that place with your thumb. And so he was setting that up without bothering to mention it. [A sonata, in this case, is a composition for two instruments: piano and another instrument—usually a stringed instrument, but can be any other instrument. The parts are equally important, making it a variety of chamber music]
Rebecca: Hold on, let’s clarify a couple things.
Rick: Yes?
Rebecca: Can you explain, for the non-cellists- and I guess, maybe non-musicians, a little bit more about what thumb position is?
Rick: Oh. Okay. That’s when you take the side of your thumb and push the strings down, two strings at once, and initially one learns it at the harmonic that’s exactly halfway, to the bridge. But then, once you learn it there then you can move it, and it becomes kind of a movable nut, and then you can adopt a fingering system that’s starting much like what the violinists have where they have the span of their hand, covers the fourth, so they like, Do-Re-Mi-Fa- then the next string is So-La-Ti-Do-. And you-and we could then do that on a cello, whereas, the cello strings being way more than twice as long as the violin’s, we couldn’t use-
Rebecca: Yeah, so let’s go back to the term “nut” for the non-musicians to better-define that.
Rick: Okay, length of the cello strings, is stopped in two places. It’s stopped at the bridge, which sits on the belly of the instrument, then, at the far low-end of the fingerboard. There’s this - it’s called the nut. It sits above the fingerboard and the strings go over it, and that sort of defines the length of the string.
Rebecca: Okay, you said low-end, that’s the reference point of pitch, not of space?
Rick: Yes, mhmm.
Rebecca: Yeah. That’s something we-musicians have to keep in mind, because to the non-musician, low would be near the bridge. (chuckles)
Rick: Near the bridge, yeah. (chuckles) Exactly, thank you.
Rebecca: Great. Yeah. Well it’s hard. I mean, we’re talking and talking about this stuff, and it’s very difficult to remember what non-musicians don’t know. Let’s go back to the Arpeggione Sonata-
Rick: Yes?
Rebecca: -By Schubert, I believe? [Franz Schubert, 19th century Austrian composer]
Rick: Mhmm.
Rebecca: And-
Rick: It was-
Rebecca: Go ahead.
Rick: -the Arpeggione, was kind of a bowed guitar. It had a very short lifetime, I think in the 1820s or, around there somewhere. And then Schubert wrote this one piece for it, which is, like, all Schubert is gorgeous, unending melody and everything- but it-the Arpeggione had an E string, which is a fifth higher than ... five notes higher than the highest string on the cello. And so it requires all kinds of use of the thumb, all throughout the piece, to simulate having that higher string.
Rebecca: Right, because, just to clarify, the highest string on the cello is A.
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: And if you had a fifth string, it was an E. Then you could actually compete with the violins.
Rick: Yes.
Rebecca: But it plays more easily with the violin.
Rick: Right.
Rebecca: Great. Okay. Well let’s see. I think I’ve caught up with my notes.
Rick: Okay.
Rebecca: Do you have other things to tell us?
Rick: Boy, I think, uh, (chuckles) I think I’ve come to the end of my notes here too.
Rebecca: Okay. I-I recall you coming back to Casper Wyoming.
Rick: Mhmm.
Rebecca: From South Dakota, seemed to me, quite often and playing chamber music concerts and solo pieces sometimes. Do you have any recollections from those performances, and anything you’d like to tell us about them?
Rick: Uh, well, like I played, y’know, Curtis Peacock, in addition to being a wonderful conductor, was a very fine violinist, and I would often play concerts with him. He would invite me back to the Casper Chamber Music Society, that was very active. I’m sure you know that. They would sponsor, I don’t know how many, maybe five concerts a year? Something like that, and they asked me to come a number of times. My sister Ann was on the board, and maybe that’s why, or, who knows, but, at any rate, Yeah. So, a couple times I came with a wonderful pianist from here that I played with in the trio, and then when I left the trio because of my finger, she would play with me on my bass recital. Mostly transcriptions of American music. And she could, y’know, read my mind, we played together in the trio that, we’d often rehearse once, then give the recital. It was wonderful, and I remember taking her, at least to one of the Casper Chamber Music Society Concerts.
Rebecca: A-ha. Okay, well I’ve been taking notes like mad, and I think I’ve gotten every question answered that I had.
Rick: Okay.
Rebecca: So, are we ready to conclude this interview?
Rick: I guess so, yeah. I think so.
Rebecca: Well, thank you Rick for giving us your time. This is great. It’ll be a really good addition.
Rick: Well, and thank you for doing what you’re doing. It’s important to preserve the history.