FOR ART'S SAKE | MUSIC REVIEW | YO-YO MA | DONNE TEMPO
Yo-Yo Ma - We Are What We Repeatedly Do
by Jacquie Kubin“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. “
— Aristotle
Washington, D.C. - November 12, 2007 - To see Yo-Yo Ma play is to see a man commune with his God. A virtuoso who is complete with his music and his muse.
A twenty-five year long quest to see this master is realized at Mr. Ma's as he revisits the Washington Performing Arts Society at The Kennedy Center .
Other collaborators of note are composer John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) who wrote a Cello Concerto premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (Lenox, Massachusettes) in 1994.
Then there is composer and pianist Andre Previn whose numerous accolades include a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement, several Grammy Awards, and Musical America’s “Musician of the Year.” He too composed a Cello Sonata for Yo-Yo Ma.
Mr. Ma’s career has made him a modern day ambassador of music, he has performed with Sting (“Fragile” with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the 2002 Winter Olympic, Salt Lake City, Utah), on popular television (The West Wing), and his work can be heard in the soundtrack of the popular films Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha. Mr. Ma have been a guest on Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and in cartoon form, The Simpsons.
One of Yo-Yo Ma’s most extraordinary forays into pop-culture was his recording with artist/composer Bobby McFerrin, (Hush, released in 1992) and in which the artists visited a wide berth of musical genres including the Baroque, Romantic and 20th Century periods of music.
Their rendition of the classic lullaby "Hush Little Baby" showcasing each artists remarkable talent.
So a desire to see someone so accomplished, indeed, becomes a quest. Then, finally, tickets in one hand, eight-year-old child grasping the other, we venture to the Kennedy Center y.
Unfortunately, our seats are located so we can only see the railing in front of our face. Mr. Ma is only visible by craning uncomfortably forward. The piano expertly played by British artist Kathryn Stott is completely blocked from view and only her shoulders and head visible.
Intermission. And the realization that we may just need to go home, but stopping by the WPAS (Washington Performing Arts Society) booth, I ask if anything can be done otherwise we will just, sadly, leave.
An act of incredible kindness and we are in the 6th row, just to Mr. Ma’s right. We can see the grain and age on his1712 Davidoff Stradivarius cello. We can see Ms. Stott’s fingers flying. We can feel the rising tides of the remarkable chamber music that builds to the high ceilings of the Kennedy Center concert hall.
But more incredibly we can see the dance previously just heard.
The first session the music intertwined, parlayed, tangoed through Schubert’s “Sonata in A minor for Cello and Piano, “Shostakovich “Sonata in D minor for Cello and Piano” and “Le Grand Tango,” a magnificent contemporary piece of that was surprising and delightful and a tribute to the brilliance of the composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
After the intermission, we are treated to the visual entangle of these masters as they perform Gismonti “Bodas de Prata & Quatro Cantos” and Franck’s “Sonata in A Major for Cello and Piano. “ And then there were three encores, Edward Elgar’s “Salut D’Amour” and the rollicking Gershwin/Heifetz prelude “To Leo and Frankie” and finally, with Mr. Ma coming out for the final, the sweet lullaby “The Carnival of the Animals: The Swan,” laughing with the audience as he laid the side of his face down upon his hands as if to say “OK, once more children and then you must sleep.”
Mr. Ma and Ms. Stott performed this piece so hauntingly beautiful that not a person in the audience could have been less than perfectly indulged.
As the music danced, through this evening so did the musicians. Mr. Ma sits behind Ms. Stott, often looking over her shoulder, smiling with the joy of being where he is and doing what he is doing. Ms. Stott, smiling back, obviously aware of the remarkable dance that they perform and the superb communication between these two masters.
But what a difference a view makes. Sitting within his range of vision offers a personal connection that allows the viewer to watch the rapture of man seemingly possessed by his cello. The body language, the facial expressions seem to have been tempered from the stories read, but then this is a man who has grown past being youthful prodigy to being an elder statesman at the remarkably young age of 52.
Yo-Yo Ma in action