Review: World’s finest cellist adds pizzazz
Every social circle has someone who makes life more exciting, more inviting, than it would otherwise be. It’s the person who takes an ordinary party and transforms it into something memorable, whose wit and warmth and radiance make each encounter a sufficient excuse to leave the house.
In the world of classical music, Yo-Yo Ma is that guy.
To know that the world’s finest cellist was on hand in Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday night to help Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony open their new season is already to understand what a joyous, fizzy affair this was.
But what if I told you that Ma, like some sort of Crazy Eddie of music retail, played two concertos for the price of one? And threw himself into a surprise bonus offering to boot?
That’s how you can tell it was one of those rare opening nights at the Symphony — a party both celebratory and
serious, where the glitz and glam of the gala co-existed perfectly with real artistic achievement from beginning to end. Oh, it was glorious.
And although Ma was the celebrity guest, a lot of the credit for the concert’s success has to go to Thomas and the orchestra, who bring fluency and pizzazz to just about everything they do together. The magic started immediately, with a suave and fleet-footed account of the overture to Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”
It was the opening volley in a season-long fest of Bernstein’s music to mark the composer’s 2018 centennial — but really, the “Candide” overture, with its buoyant tunes, lush emotion and off-kilter rhythms, is a perfect party piece for any occasion. And Ravel’s “Boléro,” which closed the concert, offers a similar blend of artistic heft and crowd-pleasing pop sensibility.
Still, it was Ma’s twin solo spots, in SaintSaëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 before intermission and in Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations” during the second half, that left the tuxedo- and gown-clad audience in rapt, almost unbelieving silence. It doesn’t matter how many times over the decades of his career you’ve encountered Ma’s artistry — the effortless virtuosity, the robust attention to detail and the casual eloquence of his playing are always a knockout.
He brought all those qualities and more to the Saint-Saëns especially, combining forces with conductor and orchestra to bring an air of dramatic urgency and rhythmic force to the broad rhetorical gestures of the opening movement. In the graceful second movement, there was a delicate overlay of sentiment atop the music’s crisp dance rhythms that made everything that much more enticing. And the Tchaikovsky, which vacillates between fine-grained intimacy and full-bore virtuoso showmanship, elicited Ma’s most attentive playing.
Immediately after intermission, Ma took part in a delightful musical bonbon concocted by Thomas to celebrate the 90th birthday of longtime arts and culture patron Bernard Osher. This was a riff on “Happy Birthday to You” done in the style of 17th century Venice: Thomas sang the tune in slow, longsustained notes, while Ma and the Symphony strings, led by Resident Conductor Christian Reif, adorned them with leafy curlicues. It was charming as all get-out.
For “Boléro,” finally, there was a bit of lighting to underscore the extent to which this piece shows off the extraordinary individual talents in the orchestra. It began in darkness, to the slow but unnervingly steady snare-drum beat of percussionist Jacob Nissly.
Then, one orchestral player after another — flutist Tim Day, clarinetist Carey Bell, bassoonist Stephen Paulson, and more — rose into a literal spotlight to take over Ravel’s insinuating repetitive tune. You couldn’t ask for a more apt demonstration of how beautifully this orchestra plays, both individually and as one.