Chicago Classical Review

Yo-Yo Ma returned to Chicago Wednesday night performing a concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in three years. Joining him was conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, who brought out the best of the orchestra in a varied program of mid-20th century music.

The Mexican conductor has made a name for himself by championing lesser-known masterworks by Latin-American composers. Prieto led the orchestra in a rousing performance of Four Dances from Estancia by Alberto Ginastera. Written for an unconventional instrumentation (full orchestra minus low brass), the selections from the Argentine composer’s ballet were an apt overture to the program. Linked by a recurring metric motif, the four movements each exemplified the style of cinematic expressivity that Ginastera pioneered in the mid-century, along with the likes of Korngold, Revueltas and Shostakovich.

Prieto and the orchestra excelled in navigating the piece’s tricky meters, achieving masterful synchronicity in each movement. In each section, coordination of fast-moving passages was superb, a testament to the orchestra’s trust in Prieto’s leadership. Even without the support of low brass, the orchestra sound had a remarkable fullness that never peaked in volume before a proper climax.

Following the Ginastera, Yo-Yo Ma took the stage for a performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, a late-career masterpiece of the Russian composer. Like many Shostakovich works, the piece leans heavily on a four-note motif—but not the Shostakovich motif (D-E flat-C-B) featured prominently in works like his Tenth Symphony and Eighth String Quartet. Due to the repetitive  theme, the piece has an uneasy sense of familiarity: it broadly follows Shostakovich’s compositional formula, yet nothing about the work feels formulaic or straightforward.

While the playing of many virtuosos is characterized by a sense of effortlessness, Yo-Yo Ma’s is defined by an unparalleled intentionality. Hunched over his instrument, Ma’s every note had a sound of assuredness. Whether he was stretching the time of a fast run or coyly fading into the orchestral texture, Ma brought confidence to the tense music.

Of course, Ma’s pure technique was as exceptional as his artistic style, particularly in his tremendous command of the cello’s upper register and his remarkable left-hand plucking exemplified in the third movement cadenza. Unfortunately, the sheer softness of Ma’s playing occasionally created balance issues for the orchestra under Prieto; the upper strings and woodwinds felt discombobulated when Ma entered their pitch register.

Like Estancia, the Cello Concerto made use of a strange brass instrumentation: no trumpets, no low brass and one horn. The prominent exposed horn writing received lackluster playing from principal Mark Almond, who played it safe with timid volume, only growing awkwardly in ad hoc crescendoes that exemplified the hollowness of his sound. 

For an encore, Ma performed The Song of the Birds, a traditional Catalan song arranged by Pablo Casals. Ma’s soulful playing evoked the somber mood of his recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites, a mellow close to an electrifying solo performance.

To close the program, Prieto led the orchestra in one more late-career 20th-century work, this time Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. 

The most American-sounding of Rachmaninoff’s pieces, Prieto brought a joyous lightheartedness to the piece with his brisk tempos. The orchestra responded terrifically to Prieto’s requests for more volume, as in the ideally paced buildup of there finale. 

There were fitful ensemble balancing issues but overall the orchestra sounded confident and secure under Prieto’s lead.

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