His eyes are closed, his head lowered in a pose of deep concentration -- that is how we encounter Israeli-born cellist Gavriel Lipkind on the covers of his two recently released CDs. Even before we hear a single note, their exquisite packaging bespeaks a remarkable artistic sensibility.
Consider his three-CD set of the six suites for unaccompanied cello by J. S. Bach. The case looks like black leather and is embossed in Braille. It opens into compartments -- all cut and folded according to the golden ratio -- which hold the disks, a fold-out diagram illustrating how the Holy Trinity provides the programmatic basis for the opus, and an informative booklet.
Lipkind, a musician as unique as that magical, mystical package, will be performing Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor with the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra Saturday.
The gala concert also includes the overture to Mozart's ''Magic Flute'' and the Pennsylvania premiere of Paul McCartney's oratorio ''Ecce Cor Meum'' (''Behold My Heart''), featuring the Camerata Singers.
This will be Lipkind's third performance with the sinfonia, and represents a significant point in his career. His first visit to the Lehigh Valley took place during a period of frantic international concertising, which included performances under such renowned conductors as Zubin Mehta, Dennis Russell Davies, and Mstislav Rostropovich. His second performance with the sinfonia was, unbeknown to many, the only concert he accepted during a three-year period of self-assessment and intense study he refers to as his retreat.
''That was the time when my career was really beginning to take off, so I had to do it secretly,'' says the 31-year-old virtuoso. ''I needed time to consider my life as a musician, and what I wanted to achieve as a cellist and a person. It had started to bother me that there's a very rough way of selling talent out of Israel, how it is exported. I had my own ideas of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to play -- I was worried this freedom would be completely lost for me.''
Lipkind's artistic freedom is embodied as much in his individualistic performance style as in the numerical symbolism and proportion he designs into his CDs. He does not allow himself to be hemmed in by the restrictions of historical authenticity, especially concerning Bach.
''What worries me are the people who create this whole hierarchy of recipes and phantom knowledge -- an entire excess of rules for something that in the end is an abstract organism,'' says Lipkind. ''The very essence of music's value is that everybody should have access to it.''
This approach is evident in Lipkind's recordings of the Bach suites. His reading of the work never ceases to surprise, especially if one has heard Pablo Casals' legendary version. Phrasing, tempos and articulation are never what one expects, never predictable, but always engaging.
''Especially with Bach, people are already telling you what you can't do, before you've even had a chance to start. I find that very sad, and it has many side effects -- one of them is that people get preoccupied with technical rules. How can you be a perfectionist without first defining what you call perfect?'' he says.
Lipkind is amused by the frequent discussion among musicologists on whether Bach is an absolute composer, requiring no programmatic ideas, or a composer who needs some sort of occasion or event as a stimulus.
''I can prove there can't possibly be a contradiction between the two,'' he says. ''Great music written on a program, like Bach's third suite, based on the motif ''Dein Jesus ist da'' (''Jesus Has Arrived''), is still a fantastic, objectively beautiful form even if you just listen to this music without knowing the program behind it.''
As much as he loves Bach, Lipkind is a versatile performer who embraces many musical forms. His first CD, ''Miniatures and Folklore,'' offers 23 diverse, short pieces, from a hair-raisingly difficult transcription of the Scherzo-Tarantella by Wieniawski originally written for violin, to ethnic portraits such as Glazunov's ''Arabic Melody,'' where his cello imitates a bongo drum.
There is no single cellist that Lipkind feels was a particular influence on him. ''I've learned from many, since there are enough fantastic instances from different cellists playing specific pieces,'' he says. ''But maybe an exception is Casals. If I listen to Rostropovich, for example, his energy is always in the cello. But Casals is the only cellist who never reduces it to the instrument -- the presence of his own spirit is always there, in whatever he played.''
The Schumann concerto Lipkind will play Saturday is one of the great romantic standards in the orchestral repertoire. ''In many ways it's one of the greatest works for a stringed instrument and orchestra. Schumann is a composer who is not only moving in his sense of strength, but also in how he superimposes a sense of frailty into a brave and powerful statement,'' Lipkind says.
''The opening notes -- E, A and C -- create the space and time of the piece. The whole structure evolves from those three notes, with a continual sense of reaching and collapsing that gives a feeling not so much of triumph, as the recognition of human limitation,'' he says. ''You always have three or four voices within one melody, yet they merge into one absolutely balanced whole in the cello line.''
Lipkind will have performed more than 90 concerts this year before his appearance with the sinfonia. ''It's a very special feeling to come back to Allentown, to play a piece that is the very essence of the cello voice,'' he says. ''It was playing here, back in 2002 during my retreat, when I realized there was no contradiction between performance, recording, self-study and concert life -- they were all part of a single world.''
Steve Siegel is a freelance writer.
Bad Homburg, Schlosskonzerte.
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