Balancing act > Teen cellist brings `search for beauty’ to Bangor Symphony

In a time when ambition means making your first million at 25 without ever getting out of your pajamas in the morning, Alisa Weilerstein, 17, is a breath of fresh air. It’s true, she may not get out of her pajamas either before going to work, but instead of clicking on the computer, she nestles up to the cello. And then the work begins. The hard, emotive work of being a musician.

Weilerstein, who lives in Ohio, has been playing the cello since she was 4. By 13, she was ready to solo with the formidable Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she graduated from Cleveland Heights High School early, took a year off to tour professionally — including dates with her musician parents — and will begin classes this fall at Columbia University and the Juilliard School in New York City.

Earlier this week while sipping cappuccino at a local cafe in Bangor, Weilerstein used the word “balance” to describe her personal life and artistic goals. She wants to study Russian literature or philosophy in college, and she runs three miles a day. She’s reading Vladimir Nabokov right now and, when there’s time, she likes to hit the dance floor with friends.

“I think it’s so sad when musicians are one-sided and only have their fingers on their instruments,” said Weilerstein, whose fingernails were painted dark purple. “As much as I love and adore music, I have to do something else with my life.”

When she performs Sunday with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Weilerstein will engage in another type of balance. Typically, she plays with professional orchestras in Europe and the United States. This is her first time as a soloist with a community orchestra. When she’s finished here, she heads to Bilbao, Spain, to play Shostakovich, then to Columbus, Ohio, to play Haydn, then to San Francisco to do a weeklong residency at a conservatory. Next season, she makes her Carnegie Hall recital debut.

The Bangor appearance, she said, not only rounds out her experience, but underscores her excitement about performing.

“I always thought that if my hands got hurt, I’d be a film actress,” said Weilerstein. “I love performing.”

While classical musicians have inched toward membership in glitterati circles in recent years, it’s still not a profession that could be called glamorous in any popular sense of the word. But Weilerstein’s stage time has more to do with passion anyway.

“It’s art, human experience, the highest levels of communication, a burning desire to reach out to people,” she said of her work. “Yeah, that’s what I think it is. A search for beauty.”

Weilerstein’s repertory — for instance: Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, Haydn’s Concerto No. 2 in D major, Bloch’s “Schelomo: Hebraic Rhapsody,” Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 — is based on that sense of beauty. Sunday, she will present Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor. She described the type of music she likes to perform as having “love, richness, intensity, complexity. All the great composers have this.”

Her instrument, she said, is particularly suited to capture these elements.

“The cello is capable of so much,” Weilerstein said while she ate a small stick of hard candy dipped in chocolate. “I would consider it the most human instrument. Yo-Yo Ma said that.”

Ma, the cellist, also started his career early in life and is, said Weilerstein, a model of behavior in the field.

Whether she plays for Ma (which she has) or for the BSO, Weilerstein wants her performance to sing. As for the audience, she wants them to “have a ball.”

“I want them to take what they want to take from it,” she said. Then paused before adding: “But I’d love them to go away feeling they’ve been communicated to, that they’ve touched beauty that is untouchable in any other way. That’s rather pretentious of me, I know. But that’s the greatest I can hope for.”

Alisa Weilerstein will join the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in concert at 3 p.m. Jan. 30 at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 942-5555.