Yo-Yo Ma Plays Kodaly
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Says Yo-Yo Ma about this evening’s birthday honoree: “Not since the Bach suites did someone stretch the limits of the cello as much as Kodaly did.”
Two remarkable pianists can be appreciated in our first hour: Kathryn Stott plays Faure’s Ballade for piano and orchestra with passion and grace, Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting the BBC Philharmonic; and the formidable Glenn Gould is heard illuminating the Bach English Suite No. 4 as only he could. And in hour two, the world premiere recording of John Tavener’s “The Bridegroom,” a 1999 work for voices and strings written for these performers, by the Anonymous 4 and the Chilingirian Quartet. Harold Shapero’s Serenade in D started like as a work for string orchestra, but he rewrote it for string quintet, dedicating it to his former teacher, Nadia Boulanger. This urbane and confident neo-Classical work is performed with panache by the Lydian String Quartet, joined by double bassist Edwin Barker.
Zoltan Kodaly (1882) often traveled with Bartok into the hinterlands to collect authentic folk music of his Hungarian compatriots. As he himself said, “The music of the people . . . can be lifted out from beneath the rubbish heaped on top of it, and a higher art can be built upon it.” You can judge those musical aspirations when you hear Yo-Yo play the Sonata for Solo Cello after our film-music segment.
Two remarkable pianists can be appreciated in our first hour: Kathryn Stott plays Faure’s Ballade for piano and orchestra with passion and grace, Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting the BBC Philharmonic; and the formidable Glenn Gould is heard illuminating the Bach English Suite No. 4 as only he could. And in hour two, the world premiere recording of John Tavener’s “The Bridegroom,” a 1999 work for voices and strings written for these performers, by the Anonymous 4 and the Chilingirian Quartet. Harold Shapero’s Serenade in D started like as a work for string orchestra, but he rewrote it for string quintet, dedicating it to his former teacher, Nadia Boulanger. This urbane and confident neo-Classical work is performed with panache by the Lydian String Quartet, joined by double bassist Edwin Barker.
Zoltan Kodaly (1882) often traveled with Bartok into the hinterlands to collect authentic folk music of his Hungarian compatriots. As he himself said, “The music of the people . . . can be lifted out from beneath the rubbish heaped on top of it, and a higher art can be built upon it.” You can judge those musical aspirations when you hear Yo-Yo play the Sonata for Solo Cello after our film-music segment.
