YO-YO MA: WEAR, TEAR AND ADULATION 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Jan. 22-29, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 54
            Supercellist Yo-Yo Ma continues a heavy playing regimen, even as signs point to wear-and-tear health problems.
            His walk shows some tilting. In addition, when he played a concerto here Jan. 21, he held the cello in an unorthodox position, possibly because of muscular aches, shoulder bursitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, or any of the other common bugaboos of veteran string players.
            Normally, you embrace the cello much the way you would a small child, with the fingerboard and scroll nearly touching your left ear. But Ma, 54, has switched to holding his cello fingerboard some six inches away from the ear, as though it had a contagious virus. He opened up his cello, his legs and his whole body position toward the audience, as if to project his golden sound even more effectively.
            Fortunately, none of this new stance impinged on the quality of his play for the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 2, a formidable outpouring of the composer’s inner self. It’s no secret that the Soviet composer no longer suppressed his pessimism, his sense of irony, and his seeming depiction of the lone traveler traversing an often hostile terrain the way he had prior to the tyrannical Stalin’s death in 1953.
            To these ears, this 1966 concerto portrays the abandonment and isolation of the composer by his society and officialdom. It sets off with a six-minute-long ruminative cello solo, with scarcely any orchestral input. It is the composer’s candid oration. Then come rudely colliding harmonies, cannon-like blows on the bass drum, and a general sense of threat.
            This could be the music  for a tragic stage play, perhaps by Strindberg. A restless middle movement turns to agitation and fanfares. And the finale has a quasi-military march and snare-drums before the cello solo resumes, a voice in the wilderness---alone, abandoned, irresolute. Never has the chilly feeling for the Outsider been more convincingly depicting (although, of course, this is a subjective interpretation, not the composer’s).
            This 36-minute opus is as enigmatic as it is unusual. It requires two harps---but no brass, apart from a pair of French horns. The basses and celli play a major role. Ma played it very expressively indeed—pensively, sensitively.  His technique remains beyond reproach, his sense of pitch enviable, his double-stops letter-perfect, and his instrument projects comfortably to the farthest reaches, with nay a growl. He remains very much on top of the game. And the fans are as exultant as ever over his play. The amiable, unassuming soloist  is one of the great musical icons, with impact well beyond classical-music circles.
            By way of antidote to the dour concerto, Michael Tilson Thomas led off the concert with an encore---Shostakovich’s Polka from the “Golden Age” ballet, a wondrous romp with humor and irony, with major-second chords (such as open “Chopsticks”) and contrasts of high and low registers with little in between.
           The S.F. Symphony opened with Sibelius’ rarely heard 10-minute tone poem “Oceanides,” an effective quasi-symphonic movement. It shows the seas as amicable, until a stormy turn toward the end with the entry of low brass, and the glassandi of whistling wind. It might be more about nymphs than oceans; Sibelius played with two title possibilities.
            The concert concluded with the tuneful Symphony No. 2 by Tchaikovsky, in which the composer struggles mightily with seeking an ending to the piece. He manages to get there, happily. Eventually!
            Ma remains performing in San Francisco, concluding with a recital, alongside Emanuel Ax, on Jan. 26. 
            These San Francisco Symphony concerts with Yo-Yo Ma continue through Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. For info: (415) 864-6000, or go  online. Broadcasts on KDFC-FM (102.1) at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday following.
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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