Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the tragic beauty of Shostakovich.
Recently in London, I couldn't miss the opportunity to
hear Yo-Yo Ma playing the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.1, with the
splendid London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael
Tilson-Thomas. Yo-Yo gave this work a tragic beauty of his own, with a personal
intensity of expression in the harmonics that was breathtaking. I’ve painted
many cellists (including Pierre Fournier, Mstislav Rostropovich, Paul
Tortelier, Colin Carr), but there is something about Yo-Yo’s playing that is
both awe-inspiring and heart-warming. You are in the presence of a master
who draws you into his own interpretation.
My late wife Vivian King was a cellist and we had
already collected most of Yo-Yo's recordings, including his brilliant and
hilarious collaboration with singer Bobby McFerrin, and of course Yo-Yo’s
moving recordings of the complete Bach Suites for cello. So when I made
this painting in 1992, I had a wealth of musical inspiration at hand. But it's the
Brahms and Beethoven Cello Sonatas, performed in a sublime partnership with
pianist Emanuel Ax, that you see reflected in the serious blues, greens and greys floating in the
background of this watercolour.
In this painting I had to leave room for the white
heading of the poster announcing his Symphony Hall concert. But you always look
for a way to turn restrictions into an opportunity, so I decided to use the obligatory low
placement of Yo-Yo in the picture to show how totally grounded and balanced he is.
Yo-Yo Ma
1992, watercolour 84 x 56cm, Birmingham Symphony Hall Collection.
Balance is also the key to this composition. Yo-Yo often turns his head away from the cello, eyes closed, listening to the musical balance with orchestra as a whole. I have set his face at the intersection of
two diagonals. After your gaze has
travelled down from the top right-hand corner to his head, you can make a
right-angled turn to follow his left hand as it skips and bounds down the
fingerboard - almost
playfully, although this is anything but child's play. His left hand is at the apex of a compositional pyramid. In fact everything in the painting is
precisely balanced on a firm compositional structure, a basis for my freely painted impression of the vibrato and the agility of his fingering, the vigorous bowing, the concentration demanded and tensions involved in making this Stradivarius cello sing as Yo-Yo does.
Many writers have
described the qualities of this great cellist. For years I've admired him as a personality, imaginative teacher and gifted musician, and
I am still very fond of this visual ‘collaboration’ with him, over twenty years ago. So it was lovely to have such warm contact again, backstage at the London Barbican.
