I was a little nervous about seeing Yo-Yo Ma’s lecture and solo performance Oct. 26, a bonus event in the Bryan Series. More accurately, I was nervous about seeing Ma in an auditorium full of 2,400 people who all know a great deal more about his work, and music in general, than I do.
A few days ago, I was joking with one of my co-workers that I could identify exactly one cello piece, and that was only because Ma had played it in a season two episode of “The West Wing.” I also think of this particular piece as “that Galapagos song,” because it also appears (again performed by Ma) in one of my favorite movies, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” So, an aficionado of classical music I am not. I hoped that, if I was very, very lucky, Ma would play my two-and-a-half minute Galapagos/West Wing song, and I, too, could hum along.
To my very pleasant surprise, Ma played the piece – the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major – several times throughout the evening. Apparently, it was the first piece he learned to play as a four-year-old child. For Ma, the piece was both a teacher and a Rorshach test, changing as he himself grew and learned.
Ma related his somewhat rude awakening in college, when a teacher told him, “You play the instrument very well, but haven’t found your voice.” Ma said that he had to learn not to rely on instinct and technical perfection, but instead to pursue the emotional thread that the composer intended.
Later, as he created public television documentaries about other artists and collaborated with world musicians on the Silk Road Project, Ma says he learned even more about why and how they used certain techniques: Bach’s silent pauses in the music, Haydn’s surprise emotional peaks, a bagpiper’s drone. He clearly approaches his music intellectually, and I think that’s what keeps his music fresh after 50 years. Every time Ma played the Bach suite last night, it was a completely different piece of music.
When he first began performing the Bach Cello Suites professionally, Ma said he would get letters from people telling him how the selections gave them emotional comfort during difficult times. “I thought, that’s odd,” he said. “How could a piece of music have that transformative property? How could it give you solace? How could it heal?”
Well, this nervous classical music-novice may not have needed “healing” last night, but Ma’s performance certainly brought me a measure of solace, not to mention a greater appreciation for the subtleties of a piece of music I thought I knew so well.
--Sara Butner
Update: Yo-Yo Ma a hit in Charlotte concert.
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