What: Yo-Yo Ma with the Victoria Symphony
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Monday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out
Yo-Yo Ma has played Dvorak’s Cello Concerto a lot. An awful lot. But rest assured the most famous cellist of our time won’t phone it in Monday night at the Royal Theatre.
Many view Dvorak’s 1895 masterpiece as the most beautiful cello concerto ever composed. Not surprisingly, Ma’s been playing the Cello Concerto in B Minor since he was 12. The 60-year-old musician performs it around the globe and has recorded it multiple times. He knows it like he knows his own face.
One might wonder, then, whether it’s a challenge to keep such a piece fresh. Ma, phoning en route this week from a car in Chicago (don’t worry, he was the passenger), explained why he never tires of this musical chestnut.
The cellist said he views music as something that “exists in nature,” such as a tree or a sunset. Of course, it’s impossible to grow tired of sunsets, no matter how many times one witnesses them.
“What we admire in nature is that you could look at the same view, year after year. It’s always beautiful. There’s always something to look for,” Ma said.
In returning to a familiar musical composition, he also tries to retain the “sense of wonder” children have when experiencing something for the first time. In addition, Ma said he likes to vary his approach to playing a work, depending in part on the conductor and the orchestra. There are many ways to view anything, he added, including music.
In Victoria, he is looking forward to discussing and rehearsing the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Victoria Symphony music director Tania Miller, who conducts Monday’s concert (which also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7).
The pair met months ago in Vancouver, when Miller saw Ma’s performance of the Cello Concerto with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Ma said Miller’s attendance was, in part, preparation for the Victoria concert.
He was favourably impressed by this.
“I was incredibly touched by that kind of attitude . . . the fact she would take the time and effort to do that. What that says to me, in very clear terms, is that here’s somebody who cares.”
Ma is a former child prodigy who burned brightly at a young age and never looked back. Born in Paris and raised in New York City, he started performing at the age of five.
He has recorded more than 90 albums and won more than 18 Grammy awards.
Unlike most classical musicians, Yo-Yo Ma is a name the average person recognizes. Like Luciano Pavarotti or Leonard Bernstein, he retains a firm perch within pop-culture consciousness.
It’s partly the sheer brilliance of his playing. And it’s partly the fact Ma has had no qualms about ambling out of the classical music world when it suits him. He backed country-popsters Dixie Chicks as a sideman. He cut an album with Bobby (Don’t Worry Be Happy) McFerrin. He collaborated with bluegrass musicians for the disc The Goat Rodeo Sessions, which won a Grammy in the folk category.
Ma doesn’t mind doing the unexpected. When he played the Dvorak Cello Concerto last May with the Vancouver Symphony, conductor Bramwell Tovey mentioned that a cellist in the orchestra had taken ill and was unable to perform.
Tovey jokingly asked Ma if he would care to fill in for the ailing musician. To his surprise, the cellist cheerfully agreed to join the cello section for Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.
It’s not the sort of thing visiting guest stars usually do. Yet Ma saw it differently.
“It’s lovely that someone like Bramwell Tovey could be so spontaneous about it,” Ma said. “And, of course, I love an opportunity to make additional music with people that I like enormously. It was a total pleasure.”
Ma turned 60 last October. He said it was significant, but no more so than any event in his life.
Making music, for him, is inseparable from the act of living. The music he produces is a reflection of “the accumulation of unbelievable experiences” he’s had so far.
“You report on [your life] and giving meaning to it in the sound world. The way [a writer] would with words, I would try to do with sounds.”
Ma once told a reporter that when it comes to music, he thinks in terms of images, shapes and movement rather than sound. Asked about this, the cellist confirmed it’s true. It’s a scientific viewpoint. Sound is created by using energy. The energy moves air, moves molecules. Sound is not static, it’s moving energy.
“So I think shapes absolutely, energy absolutely, motion absolutely,” Ma said.
During this interview, Ma revealed a philosophical bent. For instance, he views music-making as not merely the production of sound, but as being very much about the musician who creates it.
Music reflects “the way someone thinks about the world, how it all fits in,” he said.
Making music is also about showing vulnerability. Society tends to discourage this, Ma said, partly because revealing too much of oneself can invite ridicule.
Yet for the musician, exposing one’s vulnerable side to reveal the intimate self is essential, he said.
“To show that in a public forum is a skill set. You actually have to let yourself be that thing, that expresses your vulnerability. That requires a disciplined state of mind.”
Ma is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as such legendary cellists as Pablo Casals or Jacqueline du Pré. Some say Ma is the greatest cellist ever.
It’s not something Ma concerns himself with. Rating who’s “best” is a reflection of a hierarchical, competitive society that’s currently obsessed with Top 10 lists, he said.
“Being a cellist is not a competition. It’s not: ‘Who plays faster or louder?’ which you can measure. It’s more like: ‘What are you trying to say?’ ” Ma said.
“The only thing you can measure is: ‘If you know what someone is trying to say, how are they saying it?’ It’s not a competitive thing, it’s more like a mastery thing. Which is actually deeply human.”