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After a rousing efficiency of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday, the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma returned to the stage for an encore.
However quite than rush into a well-known crowd-pleaser, Ma started talking from the stage of David Geffen Corridor to the sold-out crowd. He defined the work he would play: “Tune of the Birds,” a Catalonian people music that was a favourite of the eminent cellist Pablo Casals, who carried out it as a name for peace and to evoke his native Catalonia, which he had fled when he went into exile after the Spanish Civil Battle.
“Women and gents, the Elgar Cello Concerto was written in 1919, proper after the Nice Battle — the Nice Battle that we mentioned would by no means occur once more,” Ma advised the viewers of about 2,200 individuals, talking with no microphone.
Then he spoke of Casals who, after World Battle II, suspended his live performance profession to protest the choice of the Allies to not attempt to topple Franco in Spain. “And the one instances he would play could be to play this piece,” Ma famous, “which is from his native Catalonia, a people music that he thought symbolized freedom.”
In a phone interview, Ma mentioned his purpose was to remind individuals of their shared humanity at a time when there’s a lot strife and struggling on the earth, together with in Ukraine.
“The query is, why can we hold doing this to ourselves?” he mentioned.
Ma mentioned that music was a method of coping “in a world the place now we have each empathy deficit and empathy fatigue.”
“How many people take into consideration World Battle I or World Battle II?” he mentioned. “How many people take into consideration Rwanda or concerning the Rohingya? These all turn out to be distant in a short time in our first world. However for individuals in different elements of the world, it’s fixed, it doesn’t go away.”
“I don’t have a solution,” he added. “I’m looking for a method of coping myself. And possibly at some degree enjoying music is a method of participating individuals within the frequent search of who we’re, and who we need to be.”
Ma has lengthy been keen on “Tune of the Birds,” which he has typically carried out previously.
Within the interview, he mentioned the piece was highly effective partially as a result of it highlighted the particular talents of birds.
“They actually can have altitude and perspective on our world and have the liberty to cross all our boundaries and borders,” he mentioned. “There’s something simply wondrous about that. And we’re a part of the identical world. Can we study from that and hopefully not make the identical kind of errors time and again?”
Because the Russian invasion final yr, Ma has used music to indicate solidarity with Ukraine. He carried out the Ukrainian nationwide anthem final yr with the pianist Emanuel Ax and the violinist Leonidas Kavakos earlier than a live performance on the Kennedy Middle. He additionally performed a Bach cello suite on the sidewalk exterior the Russian Embassy in Washington.
Casals, considered one of many best cellists of all time, fled Spain within the late Nineteen Thirties, saying he wouldn’t return till democracy was restored. Residing within the French border city of Prades, he labored to lift cash for refugees of the Spanish Civil Battle, writing letters to officers, charities, journalists and others looking for assist.
He would carry out “Tune of the Birds,” or “El Cant dels Ocells,” on the finish of his music festivals in Prades and the scattered concert events he performed in exile. He performed it in 1961 on the White Home for President John F. Kennedy. And he carried out it once more when he visited the United Nations in 1971, two years earlier than he died, to ship an antiwar message.
“The birds within the sky, within the house, within the house, sing ‘peace, peace, peace,’” Casals mentioned. “The music is a music that Bach and Beethoven and all of the greats would have cherished and admired. It’s so stunning and additionally it is the soul of my nation, Catalonia.”
Ma has typically paid tribute to Casals, calling him a hero. He performed for the eminent cellist in 1962, when he was 7 and Casals was 85. Casals helped launch Ma’s profession when he introduced the prodigy to the eye of Leonard Bernstein, then the music director of the New York Philharmonic, who launched Ma at a efficiency on the White Home that very same yr earlier than an viewers that included President Kennedy.
Within the interview, Ma recalled visiting Casals’s summer time residence in Spain in 2019, which now homes a museum, the place he noticed his letters of protest and pleas to assist refugees.
“Casals confirmed me, at the same time as a younger boy, that he had his priorities,” he mentioned. “He was a human being first, a musician second and a cellist third.”
Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
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