Aldo Parisot, the Cellist: The Importance of the Circle by Susan Hawkshaw (review)

Cellist Aldo Simões Parisot (1918–2018) was a pillar of the music program at the Yale School of Music during his sixty years on the faculty. He was one of the greatest performers and pedagogues of the recent era, known for his expressive playing and his support for his students. Susan Hawkshaw's book, part of Pendragon Press's Lives in Music series, is currently the only one dedicated to his career. She uses interviews with Parisot and his students, concert reviews, and programs from the Aldo Parisot archives to share stories about Parisot's life as a performer, teacher, and painter. The preface also mentions interviews with his wife Elizabeth, but they were largely absent from the book. The structure is roughly chronological, although Hawkshaw's digressions often make the through line of the narrative difficult to follow. In addition to the biographical information, the book contains a photo album with eighteen images and appendices offering additional information about his career, interviews with former students, and a transcription of his keynote address at Harid Conservatory's 1994 commencement ceremony.

While Hawkshaw focuses on Parisot's life and career as a performer, the interviews in the appendices are filled with terrific information about his approach to teaching. The contributors include several well-known cellists: Ole Akahoshi, Pansy Chang, Patrick Jee, Ralph Kirshbaum, Rhonda Rider, Shauna Rolston, Barrett Sills, Jian Wang, and Thomas Wiebe. Through their words, readers come to understand the deep connection and commitment to students that Parisot sought and achieved. Also, many of the interviews include specific pedagogical information about Parisot's approach to the cello, which is valuable to cellists of every level. The photo album shows Parisot with several major figures of the twentieth century, from composer-conductors Leonard Bernstein and Paul Hindemith to cellists Janos Starker, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Yo-Yo Ma.

Hawkshaw describes Parisot as "an extraordinary cellist with a creative bent" (p. ix) in his solo career. She uses information from eight interviews and numerous informal conversations with Parisot, largely retelling those interviews supplemented by a handful of quotations from his former students and concert reviews. The reviews, which are unanimously favorable and add little depth to the narrative, seem redundant as they confirm Parisot's profound expressivity and technical mastery (except where Hawkshaw simply writes that there were "excellent reviews" [p. 86] without further discussion). Often, she uses direct quotations (some more than a page long) from Parisot and describes minor concerts by listing the repertoire and date of performance. These descriptions interrupt the narrative and seem superfluous; perhaps presenting these details in a table rather than within a biographical narrative would have been more effective.

Born in Natal, Brazil, Parisot grew up in a family with little money. Hawkshaw suggests his birth year is "uncertain" (p. 1), but his New York Times obituary and personal website both list 1918. His father died when he was four, at which point his mother married Italian cellist Thomazzo Babini, Parisot's first teacher. Although he was an intensely focused student who progressed rapidly, he admitted that he would infrequently cut one of his strings so that he could have a practice break to play soccer with friends. At age thirteen, a recording of Emanuel Feuermann captivated Parisot, who exclaimed, "That is the way to play a stringed instrument. There is no other way" (p. 5). The narrative would benefit from a clarification of what that "way" is. In the midst of a successful career in Brazil, Parisot secured a spot at the Curtis Institute of Music to study with Feuermann, but the teacher died months before Parisot arrived. In an interesting turn of events, Parisot later played Feuermann's Stradivarius cello.

In 1946, Parisot arrived at Yale and studied chamber music and music the ory with Paul Hindemith. Parisot's 1950 New York City...