Take a Bow

To me, that's entertainment.

by Peter Burwasser

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Published: Oct 27, 2010

Yo-Yo Ma's performance of the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata at the Kimmel Center last week was dreamy. That is to say, it sounded like he was playing it in his sleep. It was only the fine, imaginative work of his piano accompanist, Kathryn Stott, that held the music together.

But what do I know? Verizon Hall was packed to the rafters with Ma's fans, with extra seats overflowing onto the stage. He received a rapturous standing ovation. In these days when we constantly hear about the death of classical music, here was somebody getting it right. Ma has charisma to burn, makes a gorgeous sound on his instrument, and programs music that includes plenty of crowd-pleasers. He even managed to slip in a contemporary work. Nobody ran screaming out of the hall. He gets it. He knows he's in show business.

We can only hope that some similar formula will rescue our beloved Philadelphia Orchestra. An aw­ful lot of weight will be resting on the slender shoulders of incoming music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, but the marketing of the maestro so far seems on the right track, and the buzz for his first appearance with the orchestra since his selection has been palpable. (A big billboard on I-95 shows the musician as exuberant and youthful, setting up the expectation for joyful music-making.) Too bad we have to wait a full season for his tenure to begin in earnest.

A few days after the Ma recital, Austrian pianist Till Fellner played the last three piano sonatas of Beethoven for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In a way, this was a very effete program, presented in the kind of aura of hushed seriousness and solemnity that puts classical music in a cocoon. Indeed, the primary appeal of the music is intellectual, on the highest level.

And yet in the last pages of the master’s last piano sonata, there was no little athleticism to admire, as well. He finished the work in a sensuous, velvety whisper. Amid the vigorous acclaim for Fellner's brilliant playing, an acquaintance turned to me and asked, with the same happy awe one might describe a great fielding play by Chase Utley, if I had ever heard such beautiful, even trills. To me, that's entertainment.

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)

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