The pianist and cellist took the stage at NEC’s Williams Hall on Tuesday evening in a collaboration in which both shined brightly. Described by the Boston Globe as “a player to watch,” Jonah Ellsworth joined the cello section of the BSO in 2023 and has performed cello concertos with many orchestras. Evren Ozel enthralled audiences in this year’s Van Cliburn competition with his unique ability to connect with the music and draw in the audience, taking third place, along with best performance of a Mozart concerto. His debut album of Mozart concertos, recorded with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, was released in 2025. Both studied at NEC: Ellsworth with Lawrence Lesser and Ozel with Wha Kyung Byun. The duo offered works by Beethoven, Britten and Rachmaninoff in concert six of the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts Series.
The Beethoven Sonata for Piano and Cello No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 5 is an early composition, written in 1796 in Berlin, where the master met King Friedrich Wilhelm II and his cellist and dedicated the sonata to the King. The composition consists of only two independent movements: the first begins with a mournful Adagio that flows into a fast allegro section, the second movement is a lively Rondo with a recurring theme.
Ozel began with a strong G minor chord and a few sighing mournful notes that the cello echoed, then Ellsworth bowed the first melody with his cello’s sublime soaring tone, which Ozel answered with delicacy, thus alternately taking the lead, often making eye contact; their three-year collaboration produced perfect synchronicity. Ozel’s ability to play softly and still shape his lines was singular; his mastery of his soft dynamic levels inspired awe. From a quiet beginning the Sonata picks up speed and becomes joyful, the two instruments alternately echoing the theme back and forth. The transitions from major to minor make the first movement bittersweet. The duo took full advantage of the long dramatic pauses toward the end of the first movement, adding drama and suspense. The Rondo is charming and playful. The happiness both musicians derived therein was obvious from their joyful smiles, a sentiment contagious to the audience. This rondo is full of sunlight and innocence. The piano often takes the lead, hitting the sweet spot of Ozel’s superb technical skill and artistry, as he navigated the pearly runs and arpeggios with ease, fluidity, sensitivity and dynamic subtlety. The high notes on the piano shimmered with clear transparency, while Ellsworth’s cello shone in its clear tone and pitch accuracy.
Commissioned by the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the Benjamin Britten Cello Sonata Opus 65 is clearly 20th-century material. Britten composed it in 1961 and it premiered in July of that year at the Aldeburgh Festival, which he founded in 1948. The first movement, entitled Dialogo, begins with plaintive disjointed notes which crescendo into a wild altercation, only to move into quiet consolation. Ellsworth and Ozel seamlessly interchanged figures; the cello’s low growling notes seemed to represent hell, while the piano’s high ethereal notes summoned heaven. In the Scherzo-Pizzicato movement, plucked by the cello throughout, at times softly, other times with ferocity, the piano punctuated with staccato piano chords and pearly arpeggios. The duo coordinated this fast movement perfectly. Ellsworth played the haunting melody of the lento Elegia as it wandered to different keys seeming to search for a home, while the separated piano notes grew louder and gradually fell in pitch, creating ominous tension. The whimsical and playful Marcia, more a march for toy soldiers than a military parade, ended abruptly with a piano glissando. The Moto Perpetua brought a furious attack of the cello’s strings, reaching to the very top of its range, and Ozels answered with emphatic arpeggios. The wild and scintillating interpretation gave great delight.
Rachmaninoff wrote his Sonata in G Minor for cello. Op. 19, in 1901, shortly after his iconic second piano concerto, and following a prolonged period of compositional paralysis caused by the disastrous premiere of the composer’s first symphony. But by 1900 Rachmaninoff had turned the corner and entered a very productive period. I would have preferred to hear the piano more prominently, especially in the first and second movements, where the sonata is often a duet, and even when the cello plays its magnificent melody lines which are the hallmark of Rachmaninoff’s music, it is the piano that contains the panoply of tonal layers and counterpoint that add the essential interest and texture to the sonata. Where the sweeping melodies are the cerebrum, the polyphonic accompaniment is the heart and soul. Ellsworth’s cello sang and soared here as nowhere else during the evening, producing glorious colors and resonance. Whenever the piano took the lead, the effect was just magnificent. Ozel excels in reaching Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic best. The thematic repeats when the piano takes over arrive as richer versions of the originals with the novel dimensions of the piano’s textures. We have to remember that Rachmaninoff was foremost a pianist, besides being a composer, and fully understood the immense capabilities of the piano, and he always reserved his richest material for his first love.
In the Lento, the piano amplifies and completes the soulful cello lines, then the keyboard transitions to the turbulent allegro section. The polyphonic textures of this movement made an exquisite effect, as Ellsworth expressed not only in his music, but also with facial expressions that seemed to commune with his muse. Ozel handled the speed and challenging repeated notes and arpeggios in the Allegro Scherzando in C minor with ease, showing mastery and accuracy, and transmitting both tenderness and increasing tension and urgency. Ozel’s solo at the beginning of the Andante captured the longing quality of one of Rachmaninoff’s most poignant melodies perfectly, as Ellsworth’s cello added its weeping accompaniment; together they melted our hearts. In the concluding Allegro Mosso, in the hopeful key of G major, Ozel produced the most beautiful arpeggios of the entire sonata and he took center stage with the movement’s big sweeping chords.
Upon returning to the stage to a standing ovation, Ellsworth thanked not only Cathy Chan, the founder and organizer, but also the audience for coming, and then announced the encore, another Rachmaninoff masterpiece: the sublime Vocalise. With deep warmth they masterfully ended a magical evening.
Sibylle Barrasso is a long-time piano student of Robert Poli. She has played in piano competitions in Pickman Hall and Chicago, is on the board of directors of the Boston Piano Amateurs Association and has played for audiences in the Boston Symphony Cafe since 2010.