Symphony Review: Yo-Yo Ma and Stéphane Denève celebrate Elgar and Debussy

While it might seem superfluous to review the concert that was part of last Friday’s (May 3) annual St. Louis Symphony Orchestra fund-raising gala, it was such a great experience that a few words are perhaps in order.

These full-evening galas typically feature an appearance by a superstar performer and this one was no exception. World-renowned cellist and activist Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist for the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, by Edward Elgar (1857–1934). First performed in 1919, it’s a spare and, with the exception of the third movement, unsentimental work. There’s little of the kind of expansive late Romantic sound that audiences had come to expect from the composer of the “Enigma Variations” or the concert overtures “Cockaigne” and “In the South.” Poorly performed by an under-rehearsed London Symphony, the concerto got a cool reception and was not repeated in London for over a year.

Yo Yo Ma

At first blush, it seemed an odd choice for a basically celebratory evening, but Ma’s performance was so breathtakingly stellar that the wisdom of that decision quickly became clear. Ma’s sound was uniformly full and robust throughout its range, with even the faintest harmonics emerging with impressive clarity. Maestro Stéphane Denève’s introduction of Ma referred to “the diamond of his sound,” which sounds like hyperbole but was, in fact, completely accurate.

Coupled with his visible emotional commitment to the music and his close communication with both Denève and the orchestra, that sound resulted in a reading of hypnotic intensity. I have never been a great admirer of the Elgar concerto in the past, but Yo-Yo Ma and Stéphane Denève made me a believer last Friday night.

Better yet, the Elgar was preceded by a splendid performance of the popular “La Mer,” written in 1904 by Claude Debussy (1862–1918).  I missed Denève’s last performance of this in 2019, so it was an immense pleasure to see and hear it this time around. His ability to bring out the smallest orchestral details without ever losing sight of the dramatic sweep of Debussy’s brilliant musical canvas reminded me once again that when he conducts, you will hear everything. That includes elements of the music that you might never have noticed before, even if it’s a piece like “La Mer” that has become an audience favorite over the last century.

As Yo-Yo Ma pointed out while introducing his encore Friday night, one of the great things about the SLSO is that “everybody is listening…everybody cares.”

Ma went on to announce that the encore was the 1939 arrangement of the Catalan folk song “El Cant dels Ocells” (“The Song of the Birds”)—an arrangement that Casals made when he left fascist Spain, announcing that he would not play there again until Franco and his autocratic regime were gone and democracy was restored. Casals began each of his concerts with that song from then on.

It was, as Ma reminded us, Casals’ plea for peace and democracy.  The relevance to contemporary events is, I think, readily apparent.  As Ma wrote in 2018, “music, like all of culture, helps us to understand our environment, each other, and ourselves. Culture helps us to imagine a better future. Culture helps turn 'them' into 'us.' And these things have never been more important.”

The current SLSO season is officially over but post-season events continue through June, beginning Saturday, May 11 at 7:00 pm, as George Daugherty conducts the orchestra for “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.”

I last saw this program back in 2011 and found it to be great fun. It has since been updated to include five new ’toons. The important thing is that it still includes “What’s Opera, Doc?,” “The Rabbit of Seville,” “Corny Concerto,” “Baton Bunny,” and “Long-Haired Hare.” That, all by itself, is enough to recommend it.