SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Rands, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and Shostakovich: Gerard Schwarz (conductor), Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 7.12.2010 (BJ)

Widely regarded as the world’s ranking cellist since the death of Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Shostakovich wrote both of his cello concertos, Yo-Yo Ma is a musician never to be taken lightly. In some hands, the first of those two works can seem a less important piece than the phantasmagorical and highly original Concerto No. 2. That was not the case at this Seattle Symphony concert.

“Lightly” is, as it happens, how Ma began the concerto, launching the hectic first movement on its course with tone that was surprisingly feathery. But this turned out to be part of a far-sighted plan: intensity and power increased gradually and inexorably as the music progressed, reaching a volcanic peak by the end of the still more tumultuous finale.

Within this interpretative arc, the slow—only moderately slow—second movement emerged more emphatically than ever as the heart of the concerto, building up a sense of profound self-communion. Yes, the orchestra was there at the beginning of the movement, and playing with consuming passion, but the feeling of loneliness became more and more evident, leading naturally to the literal aloneness of the cello in the third-movement cadenza that follows.

The only notable orchestral empathy the composer allows the cellist comes in the form of a substantial and cruelly taxing horn obbligato, which John Cerminaro delivered with reassuring security, and with a poignant poetry of tone and phrasing that fully matched Ma’s playing. The deep-throated ovation that greeted the end of the performance was rewarded with an encore, the Sarabande from Bach’s C-major Cello Suite, whose serenity and grace transported the audience to a soothingly different world.

A moment or two of less than perfectly taut ensemble in the first movement of the concerto aside, Schwarz secured magnificent orchestral playing throughout the evening. The program had begun with the latest in the series of Gund/Simonyi Farewell Commissions being presented in honor of the music director’s final season. Aptly titled Adieu, Bernard Rands’s six-minute contribution is one of the best to have emerged thus far from the project, combining genuine musical development with a zestful rhythmic urge that is intensified rather than dissipated by the occasional change of meter.

Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet was more impressive in its dashing sections than in the love music, but the suite Gerard Schwarz has drawn from Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier was superbly done in all respects. Schwarz’s arrangement gives due play to the lyricism and charm that are more lasting attractions of the opera than Baron Ochs’s boisterousness, and his conducting wisely avoided the kind of schmalzification Herbert von Karajan used to inflict on the music. This was a performance more in the vein of such fine Strauss interpreters as Erich Kleiber and Josef Krips.

Bernard Jacobson

This review appeared also in the Seattle Times.