Cellist, pianist lead tuneful tour

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott proved to be marvelous musical tour guides during their recital Saturday night at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

Their wide-ranging program, presented to an appreciative capacity crowd, surveyed music that spanned two centuries and two continents. Suffice it to say that this dynamic duo left no sound or emotion unexplored.

The concert admittedly got off to an uneven start in Schubert's Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D. 821. Ma's usually bright, expressive tone seemed a bit shallow at the beginning, his phrasing a bit tentative. It seemed as though he needed time to warm up. The audience, for its part, needed time to find its rhythm as well –– the crowd not only clapped between movements but also applauded during the first movement of Arpeggione.

But Ma and Stott got into the groove after Arpeggione's exposition and played the rest of the piece with remarkable spit and polish. Their interpretation of the lyrical second movement was an exercise in precision dynamics, with Ma sometimes spinning out rice-paper thin pianissimos that Stott accompanied with equally soft, delicate playing. The musicians really came alive in the finale, performing with buoyancy, spontaneity and pure joy.

Shostakovich's Sonata in D minor, Op. 40, which came next, is a big Russian bear of a piece. It takes a half-hour to play and taxes the musicians to their technical and emotional limits. Ma and Stott, who apparently know no technical difficulties, were able to tame this beautiful beast.

The first movement is full of spiky, off-kilter rhythms –– in the score, the cello and piano often seem intent on going their separate ways. Ma and Stott nevertheless played as an incredibly tight ensemble, dovetailing each other perfectly through all the music's twist and turns. They tossed off the second movement's perpetual motion figures with gusto, with Ma sometimes strumming his cello as if it were a guitar. For my money, they were at their level best in the slow third movement, a mournful lament that reminds me of a deep, dark, vodka-induced Russian depression. Ma and Stott played it with searing emotion.

They played the finale, a sparkling virtuoso showpiece, with ebullience and helter-skelter zest.

Over the years, Ma and Stott have championed the music of Argentina and Brazil, and they've won a Grammy or two for their troubles. Their performances on Saturday of Astor Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango and Egberto Gismonti/Geraldo Carneiro's Bodas de Prata & Quatro Canto were among the highlights of the evening.

Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango is about as sexy as classical music gets. The piece is brimming with lilting languor and impassioned energy, and Ma and Stott played it with so much sultry emotion that one almost wanted to get up and dance.

Gismonti/Caneiro's Bodas de Prata & Quatro Canto is an appealing hybrid piece –– the cello plays a sensuous tune that calls to mind Brazilian folk music, while the piano part sounds as if it were written by Maurice Ravel. Ma and Stott played it with understated beauty and transparency.

Cesar Franck's Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, played here in a cello transcription, is symphonic in scope and intensity. Ma especially seemed to revel in this music's lush sonorities, swaying to the rhythms with his eyes closed, as if lost in a trance. Both musicians indulged in the sunny finale, tossing the melodies –– written in perfect canon –– back and forth as if they were engaged in an intimate conversation.

The musicians played two encores, the second of which, a movement from Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, was dedicated to Richard Holland. Ma aptly described the concert hall as “Dick Holland's Opus,” and indeed it was a fitting tribute for the concert hall's founder and an unforgettable way to end a concert.

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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