Word: yo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...logo on the air conditioning unit rushing up at me, and just as I realized I was terrified, the tension on the bungy flipped me over so that I was no longer looking straight down. Before I realized it, I was slowly yo-yoing up and down 75 feet above the roof, swinging back and forth under the platform. They yelled a few cheers, waited for me to stop bouncing and lowered the retrieval rope...
Aside from sheer intellectual curiosity there is a practical reason for Ma's restlessness. "A pianist," says Ax, "could go on playing for 100 years and not begin to play the complete standard repertoire. For a cellist, if you are a talent like Yo-Yo, by the time you are 25 you have mastered all the cello concertos that are known." Through numerous commissions, Ma has done his best to expand the repertoire. Still, he's swimming his laps in a comparatively small pool...
...impetus for the new recordings and the series of films, collectively titled Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach, came in the early '90s, when Ma got to musing about the extramusical implications of Bach's work. With the exception of the collaboration with Egoyan on the fourth suite--a fractured but more or less conventional narrative with an enigmatic power similar to the Bach--each film is split in two, documenting the collaborative process as well as its result. The pairing with choreographer Morris (for the third suite) is particularly inspired. Others are more frustrating, with Ma either not quite...
Whatever the merits of the six films that make up Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach, the two-CD sound-track album (Sony Classical), on which Ma plays the Bach cello suites without benefit of ice dancers, landscape artists or snappy one-liners from choreographer Mark Morris, is a major musical achievement. Ma's second take on the Bach suites is also a distinct improvement on the version he recorded at the age of 26 (which is still available on Sony). His playing has grown deeper and more forceful in recent years, and these warmly romantic performances faithfully reflect that...
...major suite, can see how enthusiastically the cellist responds to Morris' fanciful choreography and hear how some of that unfeigned delight has made its way into Ma's rhythmically light-footed performance. Whether on CD or videocassette, it is the best of all possible introductions to Yo-Yo Ma's newly revised version of the Gospel According to Johann Sebastian Bach...