Believe the hype

By Sam Smyth
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Saturday, April 8, 2006, The OG, arts

A small platform with a single chair sat center stage at a sold-out Krannert Foellinger Great Hall on Friday. Yo-Yo Ma entered to great applause, his reputation going before him.

Possibly the most famous musician of our time and probably the best cellist in the world, he has earned his celebrity status over a long and distinguished career, starting cello at the age of 4. I was expecting nothing short of brilliance when he took his seat, cello lying comfortably in his lap.

The program consisted of Bach's “Suites for Unaccompanied Cello” Nos. 3, 5, and 6, which friend and cellist Cameron Cropek, who also attended the performance, informed me are exceedingly popular and increase in difficulty with number. Each suite consisted of six movements, and the enthusiastic audience eventually realized not to clap in between each one.

The first two pieces were lively, although not as much fun as I was expecting. The cello was somewhat soft and the melodies seemed almost too complex, coming at a cost of flavor and flare. I was surprised when Yo-Yo made a few errors, the occasional squeak of a string here and there. He would occasionally rock the cello in his lap while furiously reaching for a note. His head seemed to move robotically and his hands darted with precision.

After the intermission, he launched right into No.6, and proved to me why his name carries weight. He exhibited incredible finesse for the most difficult of the suites, both hands flying across his instrument, the left hand even leaping off the fingerboard during the most intense moments. He wielded the bow like a surgeon with a knife, delicately but making precise cuts, with rapid flicks of the wrist across multiple strings for certain sets of notes.

The audience, which seemed to have collectively come down with a horrible case of the whooping cough, finally shut up while Yo-Yo filled the room with a delightful air, and the occasional smile crept across his face. After the final flurry of movement, the audience gave a rousing standing ovation which eventually brought the musician back on stage, cello in hand. He then played a much more placid and short encore, with impossibly long notes.

Yo-Yo left the stage once more, and the audience again stood up, showing the kind of appreciation my grandmother informs me is found in this country only in New York and Champaign-Urbana (perhaps the reason this is one of two locations he is doing a solo performance this year). I clapped until my pecs hurt. It worked (although Cameron suggests Yo-Yo may have been upset with himself for missing a harmonic in the first encore), and he once again took to the chair, placing his head in his palm in mock frustration with us. He then performed the most enjoyable piece of the night for his second encore.

Clearly a work with Asian influences, it reminded me of the soundtrack he played for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a personal favorite. His movements were no longer jerky. With his head leaned way over the instrument, he threw incredible emotion into his art, which he was unable to demonstrate in the technical flurry of the Bach suites.

The piece seemed to be one unbroken note, with new chords developing slowly as his hand moved up and down the board. Ending with a final chord played at the very bottom of the fingerboard, he left the stage to drop off his cello before coming back once more to our applause.

The worst part of the night proved to be the audience members' hacking, followed by Yo-Yo's lack of delivering a few words. While I wish there had been more variety to the first half of the program, he rescued the performance with the phenomenal No.6 and encores, and I left believing the hype.