Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, gold medalist of the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition, died in Basel, Switzerland, on August 3, 2024. He was 66.
He had been receiving palliative care since July, after he was diagnosed with brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme).
CCP poster of the 1986 Manila debut of Antonio Meneses with Cecile Licad
On one of his Manila visits, Antonio Meneses holding son Otavio, with Cecile Licad, her father Dr. Jesus Licad (second from left), then PPO executive director Amelita Guevara, and the author.
He was visiting soloist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO), with former wife Cecile Licad, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) from the late ’80s to the mid-’90s. Together, the couple did well-received outreach concerts in Bacolod, Cebu, Tagaytay, Zambales, and Antipolo City, among others. Apart from CCP engagements, he also performed at Manila Metropolitan Theater in the late ’80s, also with Licad. They have a son, Otavio, now in his 30s.
Autographed photo of Meneses and Licad performing
Meneses was one of the most acclaimed soloists and chamber musicians of his generation. Born in 1957 in Recife, Brazil, he was the eldest of five brothers, who were all string players. He was raised in Rio de Janeiro and went on to live in Europe for much of his youth, after he was asked to join the class of Italian cellist Antonio Janigro, whom Meneses met at age 16, in Düsseldorf and later in Stuttgart.
Before becoming a Tchaikovsky Laureate, he also won a top prize in another major competition, the 1977 ARD International Competition in Munich, Germany.
Other than the PPO, Meneses performed with the world’s leading orchestras, and worked with conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Gerd Albrecht, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Muti, André Previn, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Kurt Sanderling, Yuri Temirkanov, Zubin Mehta, and Daniele Gatti. He also did recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall.
As chamber musician, Meneses was a member of the Beaux Arts Trio from October 1998 to September 2008, and performed regularly in duos with pianists Menahem Pressler and Maria João Pires.
Antonio Meneses on the cover of a recording of Brahms’ double concerto with Anne Sophie Mutter and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan.
Meneses had recorded extensively throughout his career and made two recordings for Deutsche Grammophon with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic: Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Brahms’s Double Concerto with violinist Anne-Sophie Mütter.
Also with Deutsche Grammaphon, he released The Wigmore Hall Recital, his first recording with pianist Maria João Pires, in September 2023.
I met Meneses after he married Licad in the mid-’80s. With Meneses, my late cello education started at close range. During our outreach concerts in Baguio, Cebu, Bacolod, and Antipolo, Meneses introduced me to his Pablo Casals cello, on loan to him at the time.
During our outreach concerts in Baguio, Cebu, Bacolod, and Antipolo, Meneses introduced me to his Pablo Casals cello, on loan to him at the time
Meneses explained to me what was special about the Casals cello: “It is actually a much stronger instrument, with more possibilities for the soloist. It has such a penetrating sound, and I imagine that is one of the reasons Casals liked it so much. It can rise above the sound of an entire orchestra, which is not a normal thing with the cello.”
Baguio performance of Meneses and Licad
When Licad and Meneses opened the First International Music Festival I organized in Baguio City in 1988, with tenor Otoniel Gonzaga, I remember, we went back to the Hyatt Hotel without the Pablo Casals cello after a sumptuous meal from Cafe by the Ruins. We were so overwhelmed by the food that we forgot we had a super-expensive cello with us. The cello was still there when we frantically went back to the café. If it got lost, I would have died trying to figure out a program of sonatas for cello and piano without the latter, and Meneses would have paid millions for a lost collectors’ item instrument owned by Casals himself.
Even long after his marriage to Cecile fell apart after 10 years, there was no way I could avoid the cello. The programming of concerts I organized, which consisted mainly of piano sonatas and piano concertos (for pianists) and operatic arias (for singers), expanded a bit to include pieces for cello, namely the Bach Suites (solo unaccompanied pieces), and the Haydn, Schumann, Elgar, and Dvorak cello concertos, among others.
More outreach memories with Meneses: I remember how Licad and Meneses performed for the leading business couple, Bienvenido and Gliceria “Glecy” Rustia-Tantoco (the parents of the late retail leader Nedy Tantoco), and in the mid-’90s in a fundraising concert for typhoon victims of Catanduanes.
Relatively good pianos await Licad wherever she goes concertizing, but do cellists have that luxury? Nope. They carry their own instruments most of which are twice or thrice as expensive as the pianos. To top it all, you have to buy a separate seat just for that non-breathing passenger. For the cellist of Meneses’ stature, it had to be first-class!
Cellist carry their own instruments—you have to buy a separate plane seat just for that non-breathing passenger, often in first class
Since Meneses was using the cello of the greatest cellist of all time, Pablo Casals, assigning the instrument in the baggage compartment was out of the question.
Just a few hours after the announcement of Meneses’ death, hundreds of renowned musicians, musical institutions, and fans from across the world expressed their condolences on social media.
A lifelong advocate of Brazilian music, Meneses also recorded the complete works for cello by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. In 2017, Meneses invited Brazilian composer and pianist André Mehmari to record a CD celebrating his 60th birthday, mixing classical and Brazilian popular music
As educator, Meneses gave masterclasses across the world, and was a professor at the Bern University of Arts from 2008 to 2023. He was also a teacher at Siena’s Accademia Musicale Chigiana and Cremona’s Accademia Stauffer.
Other cellos he used, aside from that of Casals, was a 1710 Matteo Gofriller cello, another by Luiz Amorim and Filippo Fasser and a Baroque cello by Fabrice Girardin.
In one of his last interviews with Strad, he pointed out the importance of balancing personal life with music.
He pointed out: “In this profession, it’s so important to balance your life as well as you possibly can. Stress is the enemy of the travelling soloist, and often it’s the traveling that makes things stressful. It’s so much better if you can give yourself time to relax, arriving well before the first rehearsal. When I was younger, I’d take an early flight on the day of the performance and another one straight back out the following morning, but now I’ve realized the importance of having room to breathe. Soloists used to take the whole summer to rest and work on repertoire for the next season, but today you spend summer racing between important festivals, which isn’t very healthy. It felt much more human when things moved more slowly.”
In one outreach concert in Cebu, Meneses asked me if I had insurance, a regular job, and other benefits that came with being a regular employee. I said I had no insurance, no regular job (except freelancing writing), no health coverage, etc.
“How do you live?” he asked. I replied with a shrug, my way of saying I live for music, regardless of financial consequences.
After an outreach concert at the Pundaquit festival in San Antonio, Zambales, in 1995, I broke house rule by ordering a case of beer after the concert. In the middle of the concert, Meneses raised a toast: “To Pablo, who has no insurance and regular job, to life!”
A CEO of a recording company remembers Meneses: “Antonio was special. With grace and aplomb, his supreme musicality shone through his seemingly effortless virtuosity. He was a consummate gentleman, generous colleague and a truly great artist. We will miss him dearly.”
