Yo Yo Ma: a Thinker, a Musician, and a Cellist

When I was studying in high school, I had read a book about Pablo Casals (see the left), a Spanish cellist. This book mainly introduces Casals’s life, but what the most memorable thing to me is Casals’s view to his musical life: “I am a man first, an artist second.” As he explain that “As a man, my first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow men. I will endeavor to meet this obligation through music—the means which God has given me—since it transcends language, politics, and national boundaries. My contribution to world peace may be small, but at least I will have given all I can to an ideal I hold sacred.” This thought was based on Casals’s experiences through his entire life. He was a leading activist for peace during World War II. In my opinion, Casals’s view not only displays his music goal through his life time, but also gives me idea that with a clear purpose to produce music makes music more meaningful and memorable, and makes musician more valuable. I think that a way which Yo Yo Ma try to play music and share his thoughts with his audiences through his music totally matches this idea, and this is one of the important reasons why he becomes one of the most well-known classical musicians in the world today.

Recently Ma is working on the Silk Road Project, which by giving a musical performance at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 5th and 6th. The purpose of making this event is trying to display the history of Silk Road, to share its culture with American audiences, and to tell us that the East and the West had established a deep connection since from the past. As Ma gave an example of his cello that he tried prove a principle that “the more deeply you go into something, the more you find all the connections to the rest of the world.” (See the video)

During searching this Silk Road Project, I start to fascinate in Ma’s principle more and more. There is a reason that Ma has chosen a very intelligent way to effectively present his music. At this point, I feel that Ma is a real best musician in the world, because he plays music that is not as many other musicians who just treat their major as a normal job. What he is so passionate is try to find a good concept to support his music, so that his efforts to his works are effectively accepted by his audience. At this point, I would like share my opinion that what role which Ma have played in my mind.

In general, Ma gives me an impression that he is a thinker, a musician and a cellist. When I first time heard his name was around 1989, that year I just started my cello study with my father. I remembered that my father bought a Ma’s tape recording for me for the cello studying purpose. And on that recording, Ma played B minor cello concerto by Antonín Dvořák with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. From then on, I started to know that Ma was a good cellist, because I thought that only good cellist could play such difficult cello concerto with orchestra. And that recording I still think is the one of best recording today. After a few years, when I was studying in high school, I got a chance to read news about him. This news was based on his interview in Beijing. By reading his conversations with a news writer, I started to realize that a reason made Ma become a good cellist was that he loved to think and to research some ideas for playing cello, so that once he found a good concept for it, his playing would be effectively improved. For example, when the writer asked him about his way of practice, (as I remembered) he said that “to keep a clear and a simple goal when practicing an actual music piece is very important, because it is very complicate to think theoretically that memorizing music and arranging both hands for the sound producing on cello at the same time. If we focused too much on those technical skills of playing, we would lose our original sense of music, which was our simple goal, an inspired sense from the music.” In 2001, I purchased Ma’s baroque music album (see the right). To me this is a very impressive recording. The first surprise thing to me was that his musical interpretation was totally changed. Perhaps, since he played all the music from baroque period, so that he should follow the way of baroque music interpretation, but his tone and style had remarkably gone to a higher level. The second thing, which I could clearly hear, was that the recording had proved what Ma had shared his concept of practicing music with that news writer. His melody line was extremely clear to hear. He made all the pieces that sounded very easy to play although I could tell there were many passages that were so challenged to me by hearing those fast tempi playing or difficult bowings. The most obvious thing to me was that his music thoughts strongly support his musical goal rather than only focusing on techniques of controlling an instrument. Therefore, he could freely play many difficult pieces in his style.

In my opinion, Yo Yo Ma’s examples truly prove a fact that a good musician should be a good thinker first, only those who have intelligent thoughts to music can effectively produce valuable music. And I believe this type of musician will make a good leading for the future of the classical music.