Two counties in Oklahoma—Rogers and Mayes—were named after ancestors of Samuel Mayes, whose grandfather was a Cherokee chief. His long career was defined by several prestigious appointments at the invitation of conductors such as Koussevitzky and Ormandy, as well as by teaching at several US institutions and maintaining a solo performance schedule. Mayes began cello lessons aged four with Max Steindel, principal cellist of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra and regular duo partner of Mayes’s mother, a noted pianist. At twelve he went to Felix Salmond, one of America’s greatest cello pedagogues, and when still in his teens joined the cello section of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Ten years as principal cellist of the orchestra followed before Koussevitzky invited him to take up a similar position in Boston. Here he also taught at the university, played chamber music with Joseph Silverstein and Joseph de Pasquale, and met his wife, Winifred Schaefer, a fellow cellist and the first woman to join the string section of the Boston Symphony. In 1965, when Mayes was persuaded to rejoin the Philadelphia Orchestra, he and his wife became desk partners there.
Although Mayes retired from teaching in 1984 he remained an active performer until shortly before his death. He was principal cellist with the Aspen Festival and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras and was made a Chevalier du Violoncelle of the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center.
Mayes, who performed for much of his career on a 1728 Gofriller cello (he also acquired a Montagnana towards the end of his life), gave the US première of Kablevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and included both Haydn concertos and the Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante in his repertoire. His recordings reveal a particularly immaculate and glossy tone, especially evident in the later examples listed here. There is an ever present if relatively discreet vibrato and, in common with many players of his generation, he uses portamento lightly and sparingly, making his playing seem in many ways quite modern. His impassioned accompanying of the aria ‘Es ist vollbracht’ from J.S. Bach’s St John Passion (1941) is not only the earliest recording selected here (with the possible exception of the Weber, the date of which is unknown) but sounds the most stylistically conservative, largely because its Romantic conception does not deliver the more or less historically-informed style expected by today’s audiences. Nonetheless, Mayes’s playing is intense and beautiful, lending a particularly tragic overtone to this aria.
Otherwise this eclectic collection of recordings demonstrates Mayes’s versatility, from the intense and cerebral Romanticism of Strauss’s Don Quixote (1959) to the lighter tonal prettiness in the Offenbach (from a 1956 Boston Pops concert); whilst the Weber, rather like the Bach selected, reveals Mayes’s intensity and concentration of sound to great effect.
© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)