Emanuel Ax / Yo-Yo Ma HOPE AMID TEARS

 

HOPE AMID TEARS

Yo-Yo Ma NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

 

NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter / Yo-Yo Ma / Daniel Barenboim LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto (Video)

 TRIPLE CONCERTO

Kathryn Stott / Yo-Yo Ma SONGS OF COMFORT & HOPE

 

SONGS OF COMFORT & HOPE

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter / Yo-Yo Ma / Daniel Barenboim / West-Eastern Divan Orchestra LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto - Symphony No. 7

                                            TRIPLE CONCERTO - SYMPHONY NO. 7

Yo-Yo Ma / Los Angeles Philharmonic / Esa-Pekka Salonen SALONEN Cello Concerto

In his program notes for the Cello Concerto Salonen writes, “I have never — not even during the quite dogmatic and rigid modernist days of my youth — felt that the very idea of writing a solo concerto would in itself be burdened with some kind of dusty, bourgeois tradition. A concerto is simply an orchestral work where one or several instruments have a more prominent role than the others.”

The Cello Concerto, however, does follow the traditional three-movement layout. But within the piece, Salonen develops remarkably diverse and contrasting landscapes of orchestral coloration, rhythmic intensity, and instrumental by-play.

The opening movement emerges, like the dawn, with shadows in the low strings accented by pure pitched glimmers from the celesta and glockenspiel. When the cello makes its entrance, establishing itself as a middle voice, the effect is like a gracefully evolving aria, evoking the brooding atmosphere of Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande. 

“I like the concept of a simple thought emerging out of a complex landscape,” Salonen writes. That is certainly the way the opening movement develops: As the cello lines gain strength, accentuated by a trio of flutes, the scene takes on more and more vibrant coloration. Debussy came to mind, again, but now in the richly textured world of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

The second section begins with an orchestral wake-up call accented by the first full statement from the brass. But, like a sudden storm passing, the thunder gives way to an elegiac, deeply reflective statement from the cello, its arching lines hovering over the denser orchestral fabric.

Then, in what comes as a genuine surprise, Salonen uses a loop effect, in which a computer records Yo-Yo Ma’s performance then repeats the cello’s most ethereal passage allowing it to hang suspended, like the glitter of the Northern Lights.

A long sonorous solo section for the cello begins the final section. But somber reflection quickly gives way to an impressive, technical display, brilliantly executed by Yo-Yo Ma, with accentuating rhythmic punctuations coming from conga drums and bongos.  

“An acrobatic solo episode,” Salonen writes, “leads to a fast tutti section where I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung.”

I can honestly say the cumulative giant lung of the audience held its breath until the final notes faded away. Then the ovation began, as well as a series of hugs and genuine beaming smiles between Salonen and Yo-Yo Ma.

Yo-Yo Ma SIX EVOLUTIONS

"Bach's Cello Suites have been my constant musical companions," Ma says of the music. "For almost six decades, they have given me sustenance, comfort, and joy during times of stress, celebration, and loss. What power does this music possess that even today, after three hundred years, it continues to help us navigate through troubled times?"

Ma is more convinced than ever of the suites' ability to create shared meaning that extends far beyond the here and now. The suites' collective vision – at once divergent and coherent, empathic and objective – reminds us of all that connects us despite an increasingly discordant public conversation.

Bach and his Cello Suites entered Yo-Yo Ma's life when he was four, when he learned the first measure of the Prélude to Suite No. 1 under his father's instruction, and these works have been a through line in his life. His Grammy Award-winning first complete recording of the suites was made in his late twenties. His second, Inspired by Bach, was released in his early forties and recorded alongside a multi-genre, collaborative exploration of the works. Both previous recordings of the Cello Suites, also on Sony Classical, became landmarks in the history of classical discography, as well as milestones in Ma's musical life. Six Evolutions begins a new chapter in the cellist's 58-year relationship with this music.

"Now that I'm in my sixties," Ma says, "I realize that my sense of time has changed, both in life and in music, at once expanded and compressed. Music, like all of culture, helps us to understand our environment, each other, and ourselves. Culture helps us to imagine a better future. Culture helps turn 'them' into 'us.' And these things have never been more important."

The August release of Six Evolutions also signals the beginning of a two-year, six-continent journey in which Yo-Yo Ma will devote himself to Bach's music, playing all six Cello Suites in single sittings in familiar and unlikely locations.

Ma wants to share Bach's music with an exceptionally large and diverse audience, in celebration of culture's role in society. Accompanying each performance will be events that seek to put culture in action by bringing people and organizations together to address pressing social issues. Ma believes that at a time of rapid change, culture must play a central role in shaping our future.

Six Evolutions will not only offer an essential encapsulation of what this music means now to one of our most celebrated artists. It is also an invitation to think differently about the role of culture in society.

"I share this music, which has helped shape the evolution of my life, with the hope that it might spark a conversation about how culture can be a source of the solutions we need," Ma says. "It is one more experiment, this time a search for answers to the question: What we can do together, that we cannot do alone? I invite you to join me on this adventure."

Emanuel Ax / Leonidas Kavakos / Yo-Yo Ma BRAHMS The Piano Trios

You may rightly be suspicious of all-star chamber groups: for each one that clicks, four seem put together for purely commercial purposes. But the piano trio on this Sony release, beautifully recorded at what is arguably the premiere American venue acoustically, Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, does not even really fall under that classification, even though all three members are certainly stars. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax are collaborators of long standing, and the interplay between the two here is consistently profound, with Ma's warmth setting off Ax's agile skittering. Too, the trios are made for Yo-Yo Ma, with the contrapuntal intricacy of the music giving the cello lots to do, and in particular giving him a chance to display his wondrous melodic gift. Sample the cello material of the Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8. The early work is played here in its 1890 revision, which Brahms altered in many essential ways while leaving the opening intact, and you may wish to own this double album for this moment alone. The opening movement of the Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87, is a masterpiece of crisp, confident playing all around, and really the music here ranges from consistent to exceptional, and never leaves any of the performers in his own world. Highly recommended. (James Manheim)

Yo-Yo Ma / Chris Thile / Edgar Meyer BACH Trios

Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, and Edgar Meyer have for years been musical fellow travelers and friends—brilliant, like-minded performers who have converged in the studio and on stage for several extraordinary projects. The work of Johann Sebastian Bach has often been at the heart of their ongoing artistic discourse. In March of 2016, the trio returned to the James Taylor's Berkshires studio, the site where violinist Stuart Duncan joined them to record the Grammy Award–winning The Goat Rodeo Sessions, to record the new album Bach Trios.

"The love of Bach is so central to the three of us that it is surprisingly difficult to explain," says double bassist Meyer. "It can be a shared experience, with so many pieces that we all know and have played. It can be a common dialect, from which we reference all other music. It certainly is a standard of beauty and logic that inspires for a lifetime."

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma echoes that latter sentiment: "Bach's music has the capacity to be infinitely empathetic to the human condition while at the same time being completely objective. It is because of this dichotomy that I have played the same music both for weddings and for memorials."

In 2013, mandolinist Thile released Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1, a solo disc for Nonesuch recorded at Taylor's barn studio and produced by Meyer. The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson said of that album, "You have the feeling of someone trying as hard as he can to live inside the music and to breathe with it. His elaborate and often stunning playing is laced with sadness but also with a wild, delirious pleasure, a piercing happiness, even a joy."

Returning to the barn to record Bach Trios, Thile explains, "There is a religious aspect to working on Bach. It's sacred. Spending time with Bach gives any serious musician a sense of being in the presence of something higher. He's kind of a god-like figure in the music community. All arguments about who's the greatest musician start after Bach."

In his liner notes essay for Bach Trios, the composer and pianist Timo Andres admits "mandolin, cello, and double bass are, at face value, an unlikely instrumental combination, but this is an obviously harmonious set of personalities and musical predilections. There is a huge range of possibility in Bach interpretation, from the revisionist, almost authorial approach to the scholarly and historically informed. There's much to be gained from both schools, and, wisely, the Thile/Ma/Meyer trio finds its voice somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Here, drawn in by the directness of the music itself, it's entirely possible to lose oneself for long stretches, just listening." (Nonesuch)

Yo-Yo Ma / The Knights / Eric Jacobsen GOLIJOV Azul

Azul, the Spanish word for ‘blue’, is the title of the contemplative cello concerto by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov that forms the centrepiece of this celestially themed album. It is also a word that is rich in cultural resonance, deriving from the Arabic and Persian words for lapis lazuli, the lustrous semi-precious stone. The related French and English words, ‘azur’ and ‘azure’ are synonymous with the clear blue of sunny skies. 

Golijov’s concerto received its premiere in 2006, with Yo-Yo Ma, the most celebrated cellist of our time, as soloist. On that occasion he performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned the work. On this album, Ma teams up with The Knights, the Brooklyn-based group that describes itself as “an orchestral collective, flexible in size and repertory, dedicated to transforming the concert experience.” Ma’s relationship with The Knights’ co-Artistic Director, violinist Colin Jacobsen, dates back to 2000 and the start of the ground-breaking multicultural Silk Road Project. The Knights’ other co-Artistic Director is Colin’s conductor/cellist brother, Eric Jacobsen, and the ensemble – which released its first Warner Classics album, the ground beneath our feet, in Spring 2015 – has been praised by Ma for its “vibrant, energetic, collaborative culture” offering “a chamber music experience in orchestral form.” (Warner Classics)