Yo-Yo Ma’s One-Night-Only Visit to Davies

Yo-Yo Ma with his cello (from the event page for last night’s performance)

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in March of 1970 and has been making return visits to Davies Symphony Hall since then. In addition to performing in a symphonic setting, he has also given chamber music recitals in in Davies, the most recent of which was in April of 2024, when he was accompanied at the piano by Kathryn Stott. Last night he returned to Davies for a one-night-only performance with SFS under the baton of James Gaffigan.

The concerto selection was Edward Elgar’s Opus 85, his only cello concerto, composed in the key of E minor. Ma announced from the stage that the performance would be in memory of Michael Tilson Thomas. Indeed, Ma’s relationship with SFS has been an adventurous one. Nevertheless, what struck me the most about last night’s performance was his “first among equals” relationship with the SFS ensemble. Concertos are often treated as “ego trips;” but it was clear from the opening measures that being in a group mattered as much to the soloist as it did to the SFS players. From my vantage point, the result felt like the continuation of a decades-long partnership that has sustained as a friendship.

Perhaps because he did not want to “upstage” the ensemble, Ma concluded the evening with only one encore. This was Pablo Casals’ arrangement for solo cello of the Catalan Christmas song “El cant dels ocells” (the song of the birds). On the “other side” of the program, Gaffigan began by leading SFS in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final (“Jupiter”) symphony, K. 551 in C major. He was patient with the applause after each movement by an audience not familiar with concert etiquette. Interruptions aside, his account of the symphony could not have been better managed, leading up to the “all together now” plethora of themes and sonorities that populate the last of the four movements.

Last night’s evening may have been shorter than usual, but it could not have been sweeter!