Yo-Yo Ma Archives

Leonard Rose Remembered (January, 2004)

by Tim Janof Leonard Rose was one of the greatest cellists of all time. Many of the recordings he made in the prime of his career continue to be viewed as the ultimate model of gorgeous cello playing. His greatest recordings have a timeless, unmannered quality that sound as fresh today as they did when they were first released. He also had tremendous success as a teacher. His former students are now leading cellists around the world, and include principal and section cellists in professional orchestras, highly regarded pedagogues, and revered soloists. Leonard Rose was a cellist's cellist, who excelled in every aspect of cello playing -- teacher, soloist, orchestral cellist, and chamber musician. While researching for this article, I had the tremendous fortune of finding Barbara Rose-Schirota, who is [...]

By Tim Janof|2024-07-05T20:20:36-04:00December 15th, 2021|Categories: Historical, Artists, Internet Cello Society Archive, Performance, Repertoire, Teaching|Tags: Heifetz, Lynn Harrell, Cleveland Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, Internet Cello Society Archive, Felix Salmond, Sergei Rachmaninoff', New York Philharmonic, Leonard Rose, Glenn Gould, ICS, Frank Miller, Fritz Reiner, NBC Orchestra|

Conversation with David Tonkonogui (May, 1993)

Interview by Tim Janof For those of you who haven't heard of David Tonkonogui, he is the most recent addition to the Seattle Symphony cello section. He is also an active chamber musician in Seattle and has won the hearts of all who have heard him. For those of you who have not heard him play, I highly recommend you go to any chamber concert in which he plays. TJ: First of all, please pronounce your last name. DT: Tonkonogui (Tawn-ko-no-gee) TJ: Where does your name come from? DT: It's derived from Russian. I admit that it's an unusual Russian name. I've never met anybody in Russia with the same last name. But I have met several people in Seattle who trace the origin of their names back to my [...]

By Tim Janof|2020-12-09T21:04:37-05:00December 2nd, 2020|Categories: Internet Cello Society Archive, Artistic Vision, Auditions, Orchestra, Performance|Tags: Yo-Yo Ma, Natalia Gutman, Interviews, Genuine Performing, Interpretation, musicality|

Announcing CelloStream Master Classes 2016 – 2017

Streamed live from Pierce Hall at New England Conservatory in Boston COMING 2016 - 2017: YO-YO MA Monday, October 24th 2016 2:00 - 4:30 pm ET LAURENCE LESSER Sunday, November 13th 2016 7:00 - 9:30 pm ET ANDRÉS DIAZ Tuesday, December 6th 2016 7:00 - 9:30 pm ET PAUL KATZ Sunday, February 19th 2017 7:00 - 9:30 pm ET JOEL KROSNICK Friday, March 31st 2017 1:30 - 3:30 pm ET To tune in for a live-viewing of a CelloStream Artist Master Class, please navigate to the CelloStream page at the appropriate time. To read bios of previous CelloStream master class artists, please see below. PREVIOUS MASTER CLASSES JOEL KROSNICK TRIBUTE Mar 23rd 2016 7:30 pm EDT Joel Krosnick has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician around the world. As a member of the Juilliard String [...]

By Blogmaster|2017-06-15T16:21:12-04:00September 27th, 2016|Categories: Artistic Vision, CelloStream, Interpersonal Relationships, Self Discovery, Teaching, Videos|Tags: Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Katz, Joel Krosnick, cellobello, laurence lesser, New England Conservatory, cello life, Masterclass, cellostream|

Yo-Yo Ma on Intonation, Practice, and the Role of Music in Our Lives

Reprinted from Strings Magazine, September 17 2015 By Martin Steinberg: "A cellist walks on a beach and picks up a bottle. A genie pops out and says, “I give you two wishes.” The cellist says: “Wow, I’d like to have world peace.” The genie thinks for a second and says, “That’s too hard! What’s your second wish?” The cellist says, “Well, I’m turning 60 and I want to play in tune.” The genie thinks for a second and says, “What was your first wish again?” Musicians, take heart. That joke was told by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma during an interview ahead of his 60th birthday on Oct. 7. After 55 years of playing, yes, even Yo-Yo Ma needs to practice. “What all string players have in common is that if [...]

By Blogmaster|2022-04-18T14:04:39-04:00June 28th, 2016|Categories: Interviews, Self Discovery|Tags: cello, cellobello, Yo-Yo Ma, interview, CelloBlog, cello interview|

Phrasing and Meter — by Robert Battey

Today’s ruminations have to do with musical phrasing. As a music critic for the Washington Post, I'm regularly attending concerts of all kinds. That, plus a lot of chamber music coaching, leads me to ruminate on this subject often. The ability to produce clear phrasing is just as important as having good rhythm or intonation, but a lot of folks don’t do it well, or as well as they think. Remember, in grade school, when we had to take turns reading aloud from the book? And how some kids were flat, with little inflection and the same pause between every word, while with others it came out sounding like natural speech? To a certain extent it’s the same with music, sometimes even at the professional level. It’s often been remarked that the [...]

By Robert Battey|2018-09-13T03:22:28-04:00December 15th, 2013|Categories: Performance|Tags: slurs, cello, great composers, melody, text, Yo-Yo Ma, cellobello, intelligent artist, Rostropovich, Washington Post, bar lines, Awareness, interpreter, recordings, youtube, Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio, intonation, interpretive decisions, studying, Brahms Double Concerto, musical phrasing, metrical organization, Feuermann, Capucon, phrasing, musical critic, Battey, complexity, conservatory, phrase lengths, robert, counting, powerful, resolution, dissonance, communication, score-study, accents, Bach, focused listening, alignment, stunning effect, Bach Cello Suites, vibrato, great artists, performer, stylistic conventions|

What Makes a Baroque Cellist — by Guy Fishman

I was once accused of playing like a baroque cellist. It was most certainly an accusation, and I don’t know what the coach was hoping to achieve by framing her opinion of my playing in such terms. Suffice it to say I was insulted, and the funny thing is, I don’t even know why. Okay, I was playing Brahms’s F major sonata, on a cello that had an endpin and two steel strings (the other two were wound gut). My partner was playing a Steinway M. Furthermore, and perhaps most revealing, is the fact that by the time I was being coached on this piece, during my second year of doctoral studies at New England Conservatory, I had already won a position with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society, the nation’s [...]

By Guy Fishman|2021-07-26T15:08:11-04:00October 25th, 2013|Categories: Artistic Vision, Baroque|Tags: gut strings, Paul Katz, teachers, historically-informed performance, Beethoven, New York, interest, cello, academic, Jascha Heifetz, cellobello, Baroque, Matt Haimovitz, cellists, Boccherini, modern playing, Bach Suites, Carter Brey, prominence, performance, critic, Vivaldi, experiments, David Soyer, Yo-Yo Ma, possibility, dual careers, Pablo Casals, Anner Bylsma, endpins, Brahms, curiosity|