For cellist Peled, following muse is good for the soul

Amit Peled started his year with a little bit of soul and plans to wind it up with a celebration.

The Israeli cellist, who’ll team up with pianist Eli Kalman for the next Tuesday Evening Concert Series event in Cabell Hall Auditorium, has released “The Jewish Soul,” a CD that dives into complex works by Ernest Bloch, Joachim Stutschewsky, Max Bruch and other composers. A second volume is set for release this fall.

“The ‘Jewish Soul’ CD - I really love that CD. It touches certain things in my soul,” Peled said. “I’m so happy that Centaur Records basically gave me the freedom to be who I am.”

Having grown up in Israel, surrounded by the culture and the music, he can bring an authentic tone to his interpretations of the pieces, which can enthrall newcomers to the genre. He strives to bring out nuances without overdoing the emotional aspects.

But, not wanting to be pigeonholed - “I didn’t want to be categorized,” he said - Peled decided to follow the gravity and intensity of that well-received CD with a more light-hearted work. The resulting “Cellobration” CD, set for a holiday season release, is like “a retrospective of my development as an artist,” he said.

The “Cellobration” project starts with a simple Felix Mendelssohn work and progresses in difficulty toward a demanding Gyorgy Ligeti piece. “It’s actually my own celebration of the repertoire,” Peled said.

That celebration will be welcome after a seriously tough day at the office.

On Tuesday, Peled and Kalman will perform an “Homage to Russia” program that includes Sergei Prokofiev’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 119,” Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 40” and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Sonata for Cello and

Piano” - each of which could stand as the centerpiece of any program.

“It’s huge,” Peled said of the program. “Each piece in the program is one you would put at the end of a recital. The biggest three sonatas we have. It’s like a marathon.”

Each piece on the program is draining for the performers, because the compositions cover plenty of emotional ground. The Rachmaninoff, he said, evokes a lost world before political upheaval in Russia, with a longing for “what was before. It’s like he’s remembering something that was so much better.”

Other stops on the program’s cathartic musical ride include gleefully satirical moments, thudding notes that evoke factory motions in an industrialized culture and heart-pounding passages in which the cello is muted as if the character in the work is hiding from secret police.

“By the time you finish the recital, you are just dead,” Peled said. “If you really get into it as a performer, you have to slow down your heart rate. You can’t breathe.”

The Rachmaninoff sonata, 40 minutes long, rewards all that hard work with intense moments of transcendent music.

“The piano part - it’s like a piano concerto,” Peled said. “The cello part is one melody after another - beauty after beauty after beauty.”

And it’s a composition that benefits from a bit of maturity and perspective, so he advises his own students to take their time before tackling it.

“One needs to be ready with one’s voice before starting this piece,” he said.

Peled plans to perform music from “The Jewish Soul” as an encore, so don’t slip out too soon.

October is a hectic traveling month for Peled, dotted with performances from Bozeman, Mont., to the Dominican Republic. “This month is really crazy, and I don’t want to repeat it,” he said with a chuckle.

Peled performs on a rare circa-1689 Andrea Guarneri cello that delivers a sumptuous tone but isn’t crazy about the journey’s temperature extremes.

“That cello is really temperamental,” he said affectionately.

But he’s looking forward to his stop in Charlottesville, as well as to the children’s concert set for Wednesday, which is underwritten by the Bama Works Fund of the Dave Matthews Band in the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation and the Inez Duff Bishop Trust.

Peled has a passion for teaching, but there’s another reason he’s counting down to the children’s concert: His own children, ages 5 and 3, will be joining him there.

“Unfortunately, they love music too much - music is in their blood,” Peled said of his children. “I just want them to have a normal life.”

Listeners who attend Tuesday’s concert will be able to purchase the first “Jewish Soul” CD.

To get tickets, call the box office at 924-3376 or go online to http://www.artsboxoffice.virginia.edu. Patrons who park in the Central Grounds Parking Garage will be able to leave for free after the concert.

AT A GLANCE

Cellist Amit Peled and pianist Eli Kalman

Tuesday Evening Concert Series

8 p.m. Tuesday

Cabell Hall Auditorium

$28, $24 and $12

924-3376