For International Cello Day, here’s an 1867 “pantomime comic” by Gustave Doré, a whimsical series of caricatures of Jacques Offenbach to illustrate the influence and increased popularity of the instrument. In 1858, Offenbach engaged Doré to provide scenic designs for his operetta, “Orpheus in the Underworld.” Doré rendered a “serious” engraved portrait of the cellist and composer in 1860.
One of Offenbach’s cello duets here:
As you may have read here before, Yo-Yo Ma turned 70 this week. 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.” It’s more than just a party trick. Our heart belongs to Ma, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
The years, they do fly by. How can Yo-Yo Ma be 70? It seems only yesterday we were celebrating his 60th birthday.
Arguably the most visible and charismatic cellist of his generation, Ma was born on October 7, 1955. He’s recorded more than 90 albums and been recognized with 19 Grammy Awards. In addition, among innumerable other honors, he has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As recently as 2020, he was included in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.”
Ma began playing cello at the age of 4. That’s when he “put away childish things” – that is to say, a juvenile pursuit of the violin, viola, and piano! At 5, he began performing in public, and at 7, played for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. At 8, he was introduced to American television audiences courtesy of Leonard Bernstein. The next year, Isaac Stern brought him along to “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”
This was all before Ma attended Juilliard, where he studied with Leonard Rose. He dropped out of Columbia – only to attend Harvard. He spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he played under the direction of legendary cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. He’s been friends with Emanuel Ax, a regular chamber music partner, since their student days.
Ma has long been acclaimed for his interpretations 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 the Cello Concerto by English composer Gerald Finzi. Ma recorded the piece while in his early 20s, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley.
Later, having conquered the classical concert hall and established his mastery of the standard repertoire, Ma 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.
He’s also been active in film, contributing to the soundtracks of “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” for John Williams and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (the recipient of an Academy Award for Best Original Score) for Tan Dun. And of course his album of arrangements of Ennio Morricone themes sold faster than a tray full of cannoli.
Ma’s friendship with Williams also yielded a cello concerto, which they first recorded together in 1994. My most recent Ma acquisition is his recording of the concerto in its revised version, released on Sony Classical in 2022, and of course it’s wonderful. However, the earlier release has an alluring bonus in Williams’ “Elegy,” reworked from material originally conceived for “Seven Years in Tibet” – six transporting minutes of unalloyed loveliness.
Ma is one of classical music’s last media celebrities, whether introducing kids to the cello on PBS’ “Arthur,” “Sesame Street,” or “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” or playing Bach in support of dancer Misty Copeland and sitting in with the band on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
I’ve been privileged to see him in concert several times. Last season, he was in Princeton at McCarter Theatre for a conversation with PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown. His love for music is such that it is not unusual for him to return after intermission, following a star turn in a big concerto, to modestly sit in with the rest of the cello section and play as a rank-and-file musician on the concert’s second half.
All in all, I suspect he’s a really good guy. In fact, I’m sure he is. Happy birthday, and thanks for everything, Yo-Yo Ma!
John Williams’ “Elegy”
On Colbert with Misty Copeland
At the age of 7, presented by Leonard Bernstein
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”
Ma with saxophonist Joshua Redman, playing “Crazy Bus” on “Arthur”
On “Sesame Street”
Gerald Finzi’s Cello Concerto
Bach, Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello
Here are a few photos of our most recent day of filming for an ongoing project, a documentary about the great American cellist Leonard Rose.
Rose was the first American-born and trained cellist to achieve a world-class solo career. He played in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, and as principal cellist in the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, before making the courageous decision to support himself as a star soloist. Unusually, he also developed into as a marvelous chamber musician, performing and recording with such artists as Isaac Stern, Eugene Istomin, and Glenn Gould. For most of his career he was also a perceptive teacher whose influence is still felt today. (Yo-Yo Ma was a pupil.)
I was in the DC area on Tuesday and Wednesday for our latest interview. This was an important one, as our subject was none other than Arthur Rose, the cellist’s son. Art was full of helpful information about, and insights into, Rose’s personality, his family life, and his personal dealings with his associates.
Art still works in radio after half a century as an engineer. This room is adorned with a Victrola, a vintage radio, and a harpsichord of Art’s own construction. In an adjacent room is a clavichord he also built. The walls are hung with inscribed photos of a number of Rose associates, including Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, and Dimitri Mitropoulos.
Art also allowed us access to unpublished photos, a manuscript of a Rose memoir, with handwritten corrections, that the cellist was at work on at the time of his death, and rare audio recordings such as the world premiere performance of Alan Shulman’s Cello Concerto, which Rose never recorded commercially. All very exciting.
That’s H. Paul Moon behind the camera. Paul and I met when I interviewed him on the radio prior to the PBS broadcast of his award-winning documentary “Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty.” I conduct all my interviews for the current project off-camera, with the intention of having the subjects tell Rose’s story themselves, through the magic of attentive editing.
We have a few more interviews before we wrap, at least one of them with a classical music legend. Paul has many projects going simultaneously, but we are getting there.
It’s been a hell of a week for deadlines and social engagements. Now that the weekend’s just about over (and I’ve turned in my newspaper article), I can collapse. Here I am in New York yesterday with filmmaker Paul Moon (left) and cellist Matt Haimovitz, whom I interviewed (from my chair off-camera, thankfully) for a documentary about one of the great, comparatively unsung instrumentalists of the 20th century. Hint: It has something to do with one of Haimovitz’s teachers. A teaser from Day One. More as the project proceeds!
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