San Francisco Classical Voice

SYMPHONY REVIEW Ma Makes The Music

May 22, 2001

Yo-Yo Ma

By Robert P. Commanday

It was no surprise that Yo-Yo Ma made a drab piece of music into something better last Tuesday on the San Francisco Symphony's Pension Fund concert. Why he would have chosen or agreed to play Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 is another matter. Perhaps it's that the cello repertory is overworked, in which case better Ma had stood up for one of those newer works he has introduced. Perhaps Michael Tilson Thomas was looking to exploit the popularly approved "anything by Shostakovich" attitude.

Hard to imagine either of them could really believe that this is a compelling piece of music, dominated as it is by its angry and irritable first movement, with the obsessively reiterated motive, reprised in the short finale movement. The composer didn't develop the motive as much as propagandize with it, and who cares about the extramusical motivation for that! Characteristically, however, Ma made much of the lyrical and meditative Moderato, meander though it does, and more of the extended solo movement ("Cadenza"), expanding poetically on what is perhaps this composer's best and almost unique fantasy. Ma played it poetically. Hearing Ma's sensitively shaded tone on anything was worth the trip.

He did even more in the preceding work. Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, is not a great piece, in the second rank perhaps, but it is a charming one, with the capacity to delight. A great deal of it, we are told, is by one Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a prominent Moscow cellist who rewrote the score before introducing it, but not badly. Many use the Rococo Variations for stunting, showing off Fitzenhagen's little cello tricks. In the proper hands, however, it works nicely. Ma played with restraint and tastefulness, focusing on the infrequently visited elegant, thoughtfully intimate side of the composer.

Unsurpassed Bow Control

Ma plays at a whisper, and the tone retains its integrity. He tapers off a pianissimo phrase, and the delicate sound hangs in the air. One extraordinary aspect of that level of playing, attributable to an unsurpassed bow control, is that the sound finds sympathetic resonance in the body of the listener, at least of this listener. It is that rare effect achieved by a vocally great singer. To make the listener feel embodied with the music, that is the special gift and art.

Besides doing that in the variations that are long-breathed and lyrical, he treats the virtuosic ones, not for showoff, but with an ease that is captivating, the passagework effortless, as ornamentation (in the spirit of this tribute to the 18th century).

As encore, Ma played the Sarabande from Bach's Sixth Suite, in D, in his inimitably personal, thoughtful fashion, a beautiful contemplation of beauty.

Prince of the Fireworks

The orchestra's principal contribution to the evening was music from the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas by Benjamin Britten, Op. 57 (1957), in a suite arranged by Donald Mitchell and Mervyn Cooke (1997). Thomas carried it over to this single benefit program from the previous week's subscription concerts. There's a lot of orchestra in it. Experiencing it recalled Ravel's wry comment about his own Bolero, "Fifteen minutes of orchestra and no music," only in this case, it's 50 minutes.

Critics of the work, in whose number I belong, comment that it doesn't sound like Britten. By itself, that's not necessarily a fault, but it is a symptom reflecting the lack of inspiration, musical idea, conviction, and formal coherence. It draws on material from a number of other composers and sources, famously including Balinese music. I see no particular virtue in mimicking the gamelan using Western instruments, beyond the demonstration of the kind of technical skill film composers call on regularly, and imitation was all this was, not fusion or integration of styles.

The Prince of the Pagodas sounded as if Britten had churned it out to support a ballet scenario. The best that can be said of the suite is that it is simply a vehicle for orchestra, and played this expertly, an applause machine. I shouldn't think that Tilson Thomas needed that, going for mere fireworks displays and novelty, any more than Yo-Yo Ma needs to be presented in music less distinguished than he.

(Robert P. Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)