The holidays are not for the faint of heart. Pablo Casals, take me away!
On Casals’ birthday, I wish you some quiet time with his pioneering, rejuvenating traversal of the Bach cello suites, still sounding great after 84 years.
It’s hard to believe that these cornerstones of the cello repertoire were once commonly regarded as little more than etudes. The truth is, before the 20th century they were not widely known, much less understood. It is Casals who is credited with having rehabilitated them, following his discovery of the music in a Catalan bookshop at the age of 13. He cherished the suites for the rest of his life, not only playing them in public but delving into them privately every morning after a walk and a smoke. There must have been something to it: Casals died in 1973, two months shy of his 97th birthday.
He was the first cellist to record all six suites, already 60 by the time he first played Bach before a microphone.
The years, they do fly by. How could Yo-Yo Ma be 67? 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 earlier this year on Sony Classical, 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. 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 with the rest of the cello section and play in a symphony on the second half.
All in all, I suspect he’s a really good guy. 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”
I didn’t have a chance to share this earlier. I saw it mentioned on Friday on Leonard Slatkin’s Facebook page. Sadly, the news remains the same. Slatkin’s younger brother, Frederick Zlotkin, has died at the age of 75. Zlotkin (who preferred the original spelling of the family name) was principal cellist of the New York City Ballet for fifty years. Like his parents, he also recorded for motion pictures and numerous contemporary artists – in his case, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, and Neil Young, among others.
Leonard and Frederick were products of an enviable music dynasty. Their father was the violinist Felix Slatkin (concert master of the 20th Century Fox Orchestra), who conducted and made recordings with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Their mother was Eleanor Aller Slatkin (principal cellist at Warner Bros.), who played cello on the soundtracks to dozens of films, including “Deception” (1946) and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). Both parents were founding members of the Hollywood String Quartet.
Here, from a documentary on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Zlotkin and Leonard Slatkin discuss, rehearse, and perform Korngold’s Cello Concerto, the work introduced by their mother, who dubbed actor Paul Henreid’s “performance” in “Deception.”
I’ve cued it up to the 28-minute mark, but the entire documentary is worth watching. It includes lots of interesting info about the Slatkins.
My condolences to Leonard Slatkin and the rest of the Zlotkin/Slatkin family.
The music world has lost a giant of the cello – Leonard Slatkin described him as a bear! – and of course, that means a tremendous loss for us all.
Lynn Harrell has died at the age of 76.
The son of baritone Mack Harrell, Lynn matured into one of the world’s most sought-after cellists. He recorded with Ashkenazy and Perlman and Zukerman and Kipnis, and Boulez and Maazel and Marriner and Levine, among others.
I remember seeing him in Philadelphia, when he was in his prime, in a wondrous performance of Witold Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto. About 20 years ago, his career as a performer was jeopardized by carpal tunnel syndrome, which led him to undergo corrective surgery.
Harrell made go-to recordings of works by composers from Shostakovich to Victor Herbert. Like so many artists who have held an honored place in my record collection for decades, it’s a shock to realize that suddenly 30 or 40 years have passed.
R.I.P., and thanks for all the music.
Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor (with Marriner)
On today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network, join me for a cool and colorful recital by cellist Timotheos Petrin and pianist Chelsea Wang.
Petrin and Wang will perform sonatas by Valentini, Debussy and Prokofiev, with Gregory Piatigorsky’s arrangement of Stravinsky’s “Suite Italienne” tossed into the mix. Violinist Maria Ioudenitch will make a guest appearance in the world premiere of “Three Consolations” for piano trio, by Estonian-Canadian composer Riho Esko Maimets. The program was presented in February at the Philadelphia’s American Philosophical Society, under the auspices of Astral Artists.
Then, following the concert broadcast, with temperatures spiking into the mid-90s, we’re off to Russia, where in St. Petersburg the high today is 58. Find refreshment in one of the underplayed symphonies of Alexander Glazunov. It will be lightly dressed by a tangy vinaigrette à la Dmitri Shostakovich. We’ll top it off with a work formulated by Mikhail Glinka while rowing across Lake Maggiore in uncharacteristically raw weather. He was in Italy, on doctor’s orders, for his health.
Raise high your glasses, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT. The vodka will be served chilled, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
