The Genius of Yo-yo Ma

Bird-Bolts and Cannon-Bullets, No. 27

Dear reader:

I’m just now catching my breath after the conclusion of the Beowulf Challenge, and before you know it, the LOTR Challenge will be upon us. But before that, let’s relax, listen to some music, and read some good writing. Over the next few weeks, we will drop our first listening challenge, we will consider Prince (yes, that Prince) in relation to medieval Icelandic sagas, we will sample some more excellent newsletters, and more. Today, we have our third meet-the-artist playlist, this one devoted to the discography of Yo-yo Ma, and we have our Stack of the Week, as well as our grad-student featured post of the week. Enjoy.

And Happy Mardi Gras!

John

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Meet the Artist Playlist: Yo-yo Ma

I expect that most of you will know this artist’s name and face: he has performed for presidents, has been a UN Ambassador for Peace, has won countless awards, and has been a classical-music celebrity ever since he appeared on the Tonight Show as a child prodigy in 1964.

His celebrity status, which he wears lightly, matches a discography of astonishing variety, virtuosity, and musical generosity. In the past few days, I have been revisiting many of his recordings, and I can’t imagine a more pleasurable way of spending time. Indeed, there are so many great recordings, that I had a hard time keeping this list to a reasonable length. (I mean, how could I not include all of the Bach Cello Suites and all of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas; well, I didn’t—only one apiece.) The idea here is that you should take plenty of side-trips as you go through the list and explore what interests you. I have provided a wide sampling, but there are many more riches to be unearthed. You will find the links to the playlist on Apple Music and Spotify below.

• Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major

  Yo-yo Ma has recorded the complete set of six suites twice, and both recordings are essential. I have included the familiar first suite from his more recent recording. You will know it as soon as you hear it. Ever since Pablo Casals made the first recording of these suites in the 1930s, they have been at the very center of the cello repertoire, and most of the great cellists of the last century have given us their interpretations: from Casals to Rostropovich to Maisky to Bylsma. Since there are very few markings for phrasing, dynamics, and tempo in Bach’s original score, the range of interpretations is huge. Yo-yo’s performances, to me, form the reference by which all the others are evaluated. He would be too modest to make such a claim, but I will do it for him.

• Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major “Pastoral,” arranged for piano trio, with Emanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos

  These three great musicians are about half-way through a project of recording Beethoven’s symphonies in chamber arrangements, along with some of his trios. These recordings serve to remind us that in Beethoven’s own time, perhaps most listeners first encountered his symphonies in piano or chamber arrangements, which were tremendously popular. In the days before recorded sound, this is how you had music in your house.

• Haydn: Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major, with Jose Luis Garcia and the English Chamber Orchestra

  If you find yourself depressed, listen to this concerto. It’s better than Prozac. Trust me: I’ve tried both.

• Selections from the album Piazzolla: Soul of the Tango, with various musicians

  I came close to adding this whole album to the list; it’s thrilling. It will make you want to take a rose between your teeth, grab your partner, and tango across the floor.

• Elgar: Cello Concerto in E Minor, with André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra

  The most famous recording of this concerto, and rightfully so, is Jacqueline du Pré’s landmark 1965 performance with the great Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra. The instrument with which she made this legendary recording is known as the “Davidov” cello, which was made by Stradivari in 1712. After du Pré’s death in 1987, it became one of Ma’s primary performing instruments. This recording of the Elgar concerto, a wonderful performance in its own right, was made in 1985, so I don’t think that Ma was using the Davidov. Maybe one day he will record it again with du Pré’s instrument?

• Selections from The Goat Rodeo Sessions, with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile

  Yo-yo has always expressed a fascination with folk music from all over the world, and he has made two fabulous albums with this group, inspired by traditional American music.

• John Williams: Cello Concerto and Three Pieces from Schindler’s List, with the New York Philharmonic

  Ma has long enjoyed a productive working relationship with composer and conductor John Williams. In 1994, Williams composed this concerto for him, and he substantially revised it for this 2022 recording. Yo-yo also plays on Williams’s original soundtrack to the film Memoirs of a Geisha, which I highly recommend.

• Japanese Melodies, with Michio Mamiya, et al.

  This album is a gorgeous example of Yo-yo’s wide-ranging musical explorations. Several years before he formed his amazing, pan-Asian Silk Road Ensemble, he made this record of traditional Japanese music. Speaking of the Silk Road Ensemble, my first draft of this playlist included one of their albums, but I ended up cutting it. They are well worth hearing, but they do not feature Ma’s cello playing as prominently as this record does.

• Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2, with Emanuel Ax

  These two great musicians have played and recorded often together for forty years, a partnership that includes two complete recorded cycles of the Beethoven cello sonatas. This performance of the D-Major sonata is a gem from their more recent traversal.

• Boccherini: Cello Concerto in B-Flat Major, with Layton James and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

  Boccherini was a contemporary of Haydn and was, in his way, an equally remarkable musician. He was himself a cellist, and so he composed twelve cello concertos and several dozen cello sonatas. This concerto in B-Flat is the most well-known of the bunch, but I wish that Ma would record the whole shooting match.

• Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Cellos in G Minor, with Jonathan Manson, Ton Koopman, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra

  You should really leave this playlist right now and go listen to Ma’s entire Vivaldi album. It’s total joy from start to finish, and this is just a sample.

• Dvorak: Cello Concerto in B Minor, with Lorin Maazel and the Berlin Philharmonic

  This piece is the ultimate warhorse of 19th-century cello repertoire, and of course Yo-yo rides it brilliantly, supported by the massive, lush sound of the Berlin Phil.

  

• Kodály: Sonata for Solo Cello

• Wilde: The Cellist of Sarajevo

  We end as we began the list, with the unaccompanied cello. The Kodály sonata shows Yo-yo Ma at his peak of virtuosity. In other words, if you want to hear him shred, then listen to this.

Links to the Yo-yo Ma Playlist:

The Yo-yo Ma Playlist on Apple Music

The Yo-yo Ma Playlist on Spotify

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The Stack of the Week

What is the longest time that you ever took to read a book? For me, it’s probably Montaigne’s complete essays, which took me close to a year, but that’s not really a unified book but a collection—unless you want to call it an intellectual autobiography. Pepys’s complete diary may surpass this, if I ever get around to finishing it. And I’m currently on my third (I think? fourth perhaps?) reading of War and Peace, taking it slowly this time, over the course of this year, thanks to

Simon Haisell

and his fabulous guided slow read.

For

Zina Gomez-Liss

, it was Tolstoy’s other great novel, Anna Karenina, and it took her thirty years. She began it when she was a freshman in college, and then life intervened, in the form of marriage, five children, and struggles with depression. She writes:

Although I have finished the book, I do not think I will ever be done with Anna Karenina. As Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” And the same can be said about who you are when you pick up a book you have read before. It is not the same book because you are not the same person.

I discovered Zina’s newsletter, The Beauty of Things, just last month, when she published her piece on her 30-year reading of Tolstoy. In the last few days, I have been enjoying digging into her archive, where you find prose and poetry on a wide variety of topics. She is an MFA candidate in poetry, and her newsletter follows the guidance of Robinson Jeffers (and of Keats, for that matter), with the idea that the “beauty is the sole business of poetry.”

She has recently embarked upon a wonderfully ambitious podcast project, which she is hosting on Substack: “to read aloud every Shakespeare sonnet and then attempt to summarize each one in an original heroic couplet. By the end I am hoping to be able to string all of these together to make a collage poem.”

Start with this piece on Tolstoy, and then dig in for the rest of the poetic feast:

How to Read a Novel in 30 Years

In related news, this past week,

<Mary L. Tabor>

and

Eleanor Anstruther

took a pair of related craft questions regarding fiction and poetry writing that Zina and I posed and provided brilliant responses in both written and video forms. Anyone interested in narrative craft should watch their video and read their posts, below.

Here is Mary’s:

Dear John and Zina

And here is Eleanor’s:

Dear John and Zina

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Grad-student Post of the Week

Our grad-student featured post this week is by Stuart McNair, who writes Stu’s News. Stuart is a second-year graduate student in literature, who is coming back to school after decades as a working professional musician. He is currently working on an MA thesis on the poetry of Percy Shelley. This past week, Stuart wrote insightfully about the title character’s sense of heroic values in the Old Icelandic Egil’s Saga:

The Measure of Greatness

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.

Photo by Daria Kraplak on Unsplash