The Strad Recommends: Yo-Yo-Ma: Merci

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: December 2024

Description: A lifetime’s music making together is poignantly celebrated

Musicians: Yo-Yo Ma (cello) Kathryn Stott (piano)

Works: L. Boulanger: Nocturne; D’un soir triste. N. Boulanger: Cantique; La mer. Fauré: Berceuse op.16; Andante op.75; Papillon op.77; Sicilienne op. 78; Morceau de lecture; Romance op.69; Élégie op.24; Sérénade op.98; Romance op.28. Saint-Saëns: Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix; Romance op.36. Viardot: Hai Luli!, Aimez-moi

Catalogue number: SONY CLASSICAL 19802822812

Gabriel Fauré, who died 100 years ago, is the focus of this radiant disc, alongside his teacher Saint-Saëns, pupil Nadia Boulanger and friend and supporter Pauline Viardot.

The heartfelt ‘Merci’ comes from the two performers to each other, for 40 years of making music together, as Stott prepares to retire from the concert platform at the end of the year. When two friends have been playing together for so long, their music-making has a feeling of shoes-off ease, finishing each others’ musical sentences and sensing each tiny nuance of the phrasing together. We are privileged witnesses to this.

From the first notes you are drawn in by the warmth and lucidity of the sound. The Fauré miniatures are memorably played – the Berceuse full of poignancy and feeling with gossamer delicacy up high on the fingerboard; Papillons as light as a fluttering of wings and the central section of the Élégie imbued with exactly that mix of intense sadness and thankfulness of which Ma writes in the booklet.

Nadia Boulanger’s Cantique sounds timeless and serene, while her sister Lili’s D’un soir triste takes the disc’s emotional intensity to a new level. Ma plays Saint-Saëns’s most famous aria with a rich intensity of vibrato and soars up the octave with joyful ease on his 1733 Montagnana.

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