Yo-Yo Ma: "Classical music is a form of cultural literacy"

Yo-Yo Ma (Paris, 67 years old) was a cello prodigy who performed at the age of seven for Presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy at a gala presented by Leonard Bernstein.

He was also a rebellious young man who overcame the iron discipline of his Chinese family and tried to adapt to the American and cosmopolitan way of life.

And furthermore he is a restless mind who tried to broaden his intellectual horizons by studying everything from astronomy to Russian literature at Harvard University.

Today he is considered not only one of the most famous cellists in the world, but also one of the most influential and admired musicians on the planet.

He will perform in Spain on October 25 and 26, in Barcelona and Madrid, within the BCN Clàssics and Ibermúsica cycles, together with the pianist Kathryn Stott.

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Spiritual beauty and temperament behind a cello

Ma has never seen boundaries between classical and other music.

And after having recorded most of the classical repertoire for cello, he has continued to explore world music with the Silkroad Ensemble, which he created in 1998. He has cultivated jazz, folk or tango and collaborated with popular musicians such as Bobby McFerrin and Carlos Santana, or such well-known contemporary composers as John Williams and Ennio Morricone.

For all this, she has received innumerable awards, including 19 Grammys, to which is now added the Birgit Nilsson, equivalent to the Nobel Prize in classical music.

She will pick it up in Stockholm from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden next Tuesday, October 18, at a gala that can be seen live from 6:00 p.m. through the Konserthuset website.

When the award was announced last May, the president of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation highlighted in Ma the values ​​that the legendary Swedish soprano, who died in 2005, had always cultivated: "A commitment to music that helps us imagine and build a stronger society and a better future.

This social commitment has been increased during the pandemic, when the cellist turned to numerous artistic actions, both live and online, which have earned him the nickname "lifeguard of music" in

newspaper .

Last Wednesday she answered questions from EL PAÍS from his home in Cambridge (Massachusetts), via videoconference, dressed informally in his usual padded vest and his contagious optimism.

Yo-Yo Man, entering a concert at the Wiener Musikverein in Vienna in 2019. Austin Mann

Ask.

In David Blum's latest book,

, where he compiles five portraits of musicians with an inseparable vital and artistic development, he shares pages with the great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson.

What values ​​bind you to her?

Response.

Oh my God.

This is a very good question, as I have thought about it a lot, having read his fantastic autobiography:

.

I think she was an active observer of life, with a great sense of humor and down to earth.

She worked with the older ones, but she always followed her mother's advice to stay close to the ground, because if you fall you won't get hurt.

She lived through very hard times, like the coup that overthrew Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, and she had terrible experiences, like robberies in many places or a fan who harassed her for years and even committed suicide.

But she recounts all of this with amazing objectivity and empathy.

That is extraordinary.

I am not like her, but I aspire to be like her.

As I get older, and now I have just turned 67, I am increasingly fascinated by meeting human beings who looked at life through music.

I feel devotion and understanding for

and I am inspired by his way of feeling that he was part of nature.

P.

But you must recognize that you are also an inspiration for other musicians, having cultivated all kinds of styles, beyond classical, such as world music, folk or jazz.

How is it possible to cultivate such exuberance with a cello?

R.

I am attracted to what I do not know and I have a great appetite for discomfort.

But I am lucky not to be a trapeze artist and not risk my life if I make a mistake.

I accept failure and learn from it.

My wife [art consultant Jill Hornor] taught me that when you don't know about something, you can always ask for help.

So when I got interested in

I asked Edgar Meyer, when I was drawn to historicist interpretation I talked to Ton Koopman, and Christoph Wolff taught me everything I wanted to know about Bach.

There are always people willing to help you.

And I do not aspire to exhibit the acquired knowledge, but to understand and share it.

He is like a good cook who makes food for people and wants to share his paella with everyone, like chef José Andrés.

It's the same thing Birgit Nilsson did with her voice and I want to do this with my cello.

Bring people together, help them understand each other better and create special moments that they can remember and help them through difficult times.

P.

In any case, you have never renounced the classical repertoire.

will play in Stockholm

with Alan Gilbert and the Royal Philharmonic, as part of the events related to the Birgit Nilsson Prize.

Has your approach to popular music enriched your interpretation of the classical repertoire?

R.

Of course.

I think that classical music is the result of all those kinds of music, the courtly, the folkloric and the religious.

Going to the roots of music always helps, as let's not forget that everything we have was invented as a result of some form of innovation in the past.

It is the same thing that happens with the current political and economic systems, which we continue to use in the present.

And if someone does something right, people want them to repeat it over and over again.

When I think about this, I always remember what Frank Zappa used to say: that whenever he wrote a really good song, his friends would ask him to write another one exactly like it, and that's impossible.

We cannot ask our children to always be five years old, because they will grow up and we will have to let them experiment and make mistakes, so that they have a full life.

Yo-Yo Ma at a 'Bach Project' concert in Greece in 2019. Austin Mann

Q.

Let's talk about

, which tries to connect people from multiple countries through Bach's solo cello suites, and which passed through Barcelona in 2019 and Madrid last February, before culminating in Paris on February 24. October, after four years.

How do you perceive his evolution playing this Bach music, which he has recorded three times for CBS/Sony Classical (1983, 1997 and 2017), with different approaches, combining the traditional with the historicist?

R.

Well, I think it's a personal evolution.

The first time I recorded them, at the age of 27, I did the best I could.

Then, with 41, I reflected the influences of Ton Koopman and Christoph Wolff, but also my reflections on Albert Schweitzer and the meaning of Bach as a pictorial and multidisciplinary composer.

And now I try to transcend the technique and show something that we can identify with and that is meaningful.

I ask myself about what each of the suites needs and I play them without imposing anything on them, removing all the filters, so that they sound as transparent as possible.

Let's not forget that this music, so well cared for architecturally, was the result of chance, in a German court of the 18th century, and its composer wrote it without claiming that it would be played.

Music is full of serendipities,

like my meeting with the Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto, whom I met at the funeral of my teacher, Leonard Rose.

We became friends, started playing together and commissioned composer Samuel Zyman for cello duo works.

I believe that many compositions by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms arose from similar coincidences and from the chemistry that suddenly arises between people.

I always try to keep my mind open and take an interest in what the people I know are doing.

Q.

A tip that you usually play at the end of your

recitals is the popular Catalan song

, in clear homage to Pablo Casals, who rediscovered this Bach music.

What influence did this great musician, whom he met in his youth, have?

R.

He is probably the musician who has influenced me the most, because he has been a role model.

I met him when I was nine years old and I heard him say something that has marked the rest of my life: “First I am a human being, then I am a musician and, thirdly, I am a cellist”.

I remember that after listening to me, he only told me one thing: "Make sure you have time for baseball", because my parents insisted that he should dedicate all my efforts to playing the cello.

When I was in Barcelona, ​​in 2019, I went to visit his museum and saw the instrument that his father made for him, but I was very moved by all the documentation about his help to refugees and exiles during the Franco regime.

I was reminded of him a lot recently when I visited the

about JFK, at The Kennedy Center, because one of the great things that happened during his Administration was his famous concert in the East Room of the White House, in 1961, during the visit of the Governor of Puerto Rico.

It was a sign that this administration cared deeply about the power of culture, since Casals was its main ambassador for humanitarian purposes.

This is what I believe in and I will work tirelessly for it the rest of my life, because it is something that we lack and that separates people.

Culture makes it possible to see more richness, more complexity, more empathy and more perspective, it allows us to experience the world with renewed eyes and ears.

If we turn our backs on him, we lose his power of resilience and his ability to look at the other and see what unites us.

Q.

Precisely, the day after each

concert they usually hold a

with local artists, students and activists exploring how culture can contribute to social progress.

What can classical music contribute to our society?

R.

It is difficult to define what classical music is, but if I had to do it I would say that it is a form of cultural literacy.

It is a language that allows you to read any literature, anywhere in the world, learn how it works and know the meaning it has for people.

That is what fascinated me to dedicate my life to it, because classical musicians can look at anything and make sense of it by asking the right questions: How did a composer come to write this passage?

How could this happen in this music?

All this makes me freer and allows me to keep alive my curiosity to go further, instead of hitting my nose against a wall.

Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello at a cultural center in India in 2019. Austin Mann

Q.

During the lockdown, you inspired many artists to share their music online.

In fact, his next visit to Barcelona and Madrid includes works from his latest album, titled

, with pieces and arrangements that he compiled during the pandemic.

Now that we are back to normal, how can we get the public back and fill the concert halls again?

R.

I think we could think of the pandemic, in a way, as an accident.

If you break your leg in an accident, you can recover, but your leg is never the same.

So we try to adjust and adapt.

And we are living through very difficult times, with the pandemic, the energy and climate crisis or the war in Ukraine, but I think it is worth remembering how societies have historically adjusted and adapted to very difficult situations.

It is not the first time that we have had a pandemic, nor is it the first time that we have experienced a climate crisis, but the historical knowledge of adaptability can help us in the present and catapult us into the future by trying to accelerate adjustments and enhance resilience.

And I think culture can help spiritual and emotional stability when things go wrong.

Q.

Your next album, which will be released by Sony Classical in early November, together with violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Emanuel Ax, and which follows the series titled

includes an exquisite arrangement by Shai Wosner of the

for trio with piano.

It seems the most appropriate composition to illustrate with sound everything he has said in this interview.

A.

I agree.

Beethoven dedicated his

of him to the transition between the spirit of the Enlightenment and the romantic movement.

If the Enlightenment began to favor more and more rational thought that distanced us from nature, Beethoven knew how to combine both.

He was an analytical person, but also an expressive spirit closely linked to nature.

And I think he is a good visionary for our present and our future.

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