GETTING THE MAX OUT OF MA
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Sept. 18-25, 2011
Vol. 14, No. 6
Music of Paul
Hindemith, that fiercely neoclassical modernist of mid-20th
century,
took center stage with his austerity challenging cellist Yo-Yo Ma to
make
evocative music out of it. Ma managed
the scale all the Everest of technical difficulties served up by the
Hindemith
Cello Concerto, yet was unable to plumb much expressiveness or
sentiment from
the score in his San Francisco Symphony appearance Sept. 16.
No matter.
Ma remains the reigning classical star par excellence, and his close
rapport
with both players and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is an object
lesson to
lesser soloists who are too often buried
in their own funk and task.
In
a heaven
of outstanding composers, Hindemith would be the versatile
mathematician. In
his day, stylistically he withstood both the right
(Sibelius-Rachmaninoff) and
the left (the 12-tone composers), establishing his no-holds-barred,
no-tears-shed
tonal music, steam-rolling his way through every challenge. Yes, I love
the
vehemence of his opening movement, and his unrelenting march of the
finale. But
couldn’t he slow down occasionally to smell the roses, to exude a
measure of emotion?
Even his slow movement becomes a mind trip, as he works out combining
both an
andante and a scherzo into a single entity. His
solutions to structure are ingenious.
His
27-minute concerto is a bear of a take-no-prisoners opus, virtuosic to
the
core, eliciting the max out of Ma, for whom all the fast runs,
explosive
fortissimos, double-stops and high finger positions are merely child’s
play. Hindemith
sets the soloist off on a cadenza (solo) before the first movement is
halfway
done, as if to say, you sure you warmed up enough?
Ma
also
produces a far stronger sound than other string soloists of recent
vintage,
carrying his message to the farthest corners of a sold-out Davies Hall.
At the
end came more interaction with MTT, hugs
for the first-chair string players, everything short of giving an
encore. Ma
has to be applauded on many fronts, among them broadening the cello
repertoire.
But had he forgotten that he had played the very same concerto here two
decades
earlier??
The
rest of
the program was peaches and cream, with some 22 microphones suspended
overhead
as testament to the recording for a future audio project. Beethoven’s
“Leonore”
Overture No. 3, a compendium of the opera “Fidelio” squeezed
masterfully into a
quarter of an hour, quoted some 10 themes from the opera, including
that unique
pair of off-stage trumpet calls (done from the balcony here) signaling
salvation for the imprisoned hero. There followed Brahms’ lush,
ingratiating
Symphony No. 1, withheld by the self-critical composer until he was in
his
mid-forties. (Brahms also burnt up some 20 string quartets before publishing his official #1---oh, to have
access
to that ashcan-bound #18 or #19 today!)
Robin McKee was the memorable flute soloist.
These
San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. For
info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
Broadcasts on KDFC-FM (90.3, 89.9) at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday
following.
©Paul Hertelendy 2011
#
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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