As you may have read here before, we are coming up on the 60th birthday of Yo-Yo Ma. Arguably the most visible and charismatic cellist of his generation, Ma was born on October 7, 1955. We follow up on our salute to this beloved figure and his work in film, heard on Friday’s “Picture Perfect” (on which was featured music from “Seven Years in Tibet,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), by programming two of his more unusual recordings on “The Lost Chord.”
Ma has long been acclaimed for his performances of the Bach Cello Suites, chamber music by Beethoven and Brahms, and most of the major concertos for cello and orchestra. However, his first commercial recording, believe it or not, was of music by the English composer Gerald Finzi.
Nor is Finzi’s Cello Concerto likely what we would expect from a composer largely known for his wistful, though innocuous choral works and endlessly melodic string miniatures. In fact, there’s an urgency to the first movement of the piece that seems to predict his diagnosis with leukemia, of which he learned just before his 50th birthday. The slow movement of the work unfolds in the composer’s characteristically straightforward and easily assimilated musical language. The third movement fulfills audience expectations of an optimistic and buoyant finale.
The completed concerto was given its first performance in July of 1955. It would be the last music Finzi ever heard, when, a little over a year later, he listened to a concert broadcast of a performance from his hospital room the night before he died.
Ma recorded the piece while in his early 20s, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vernon Handley.
More recently, having conquered the classical concert hall and established his mastery of the standard repertoire, Ma has proved increasingly restless and exploratory, with forays into Baroque music on period instruments, American bluegrass, Argentinean tango, improvisatory duets with Bobby McFerrin, and several musical journeys along the Silk Road.
The excitement and purity of working out musical ideas with artists from diverse cultures color his album titled “Silk Road Journeys.” We’ll hear Ma on an instrument called the morin khuur, performing with Mongolian vocalist Ganbaatar Khongorzul, in “Legend of Herlen,” built on a traditional long-song about the Herlen River, by Byambasuren Sharav. They’ll be joined by trombonists and percussionists of The Silk Road Ensemble, a group assembled by Ma to satisfy his curiosity about musical traditions existing beyond the confines of Western culture.
I hope you’ll join me for “Yo-Yo around the World.” More than just a party trick, it can be heard this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or you can listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
