Word: ma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Cellist Ma awes critics and colleagues alike...
...People couldn't believe what they were seeing," recalls Yo-Yo Ma, 25, but to him it was natural. He had a concert in Frankfurt that night, then a flight to a recording date in London, and while waiting for help, Ma decided to brush up on his Haydn. The dedication is typical for Ma; so is the hectic schedule (125 concerts this year) and the cheerful indifference to adversity. The silky beauty of his playing awes not only critics but other musicians. Isaac Stern, the virtuoso of violin and musical politics, says: "Ma is one of the greatest...
Some are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them, and some have fathers like Hiao-tsiun Ma. A musical pedagogue who migrated from China to Paris in the '30s, Papa Ma started teaching Yo-Yo (Yo means friendship in Chinese) at the age of four, with a 1/16-size cello. Yo-Yo had to memorize two new measures for each daily lesson. "I had to play right," Yo-Yo recalls. "If I made a mistake, then I would have to play the passage right three consecutive times...
...Ma's only weakness-if it is a weakness-is that his tone is relatively small...
...supremely elegant but lacks the sonorous grandeur that audiences have come to admire in a Piatigorsky or a Rostropovich. Some might attribute this to the French tradition of string playing, but it may also be due to a congenital curvature of Ma's spine. Complex surgery last spring corrected the condition...