It's all about the classical music composers and their works from the last 400 years and much more about music. Hier erfahren Sie alles über die klassischen Komponisten und ihre Meisterwerke der letzten vierhundert Jahre und vieles mehr über Klassische Musik.
Classical music lovers have been sharing their sheer joy at being back in front of live music as lock-down restrictions ease and venues open – here are the moments that sum it up best.
Classical music and opera lovers have described feelings of “pure joy” and being “ecstatic” to attend live music once again, as venues started opening their doors to audiences yesterday (Monday 17 May).
With many people able to enjoy classical music live and in-person for the first time since March 2020, venues around the country marked the easing of corona virus lock down restrictions by welcoming socially-distanced audiences tentatively back to COVID-safe seats.
And audiences that returned, expressed their gratitude and joy at being back in front of live performers and their beautiful music. At the Royal Opera House, impromptu applause erupted during the first tuning note, and at London’s Wigmore Hall cellist Guy Johnston, who was in audience, tweeted what an “absolute joy” it was to see so many people back in the hall.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Classic FM’s Orchestra in the Midlands, has shared joy at returning to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall tomorrow (Wednesday 19 May) and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Classic FM’s Orchestra in North-West England, excitedly follows suit the next day.
Read more: Wigmore Hall to reopen to audiences with special 120th anniversary festival... /
Cello prodigy Yo-Yo Ma plays for President J.F. Kennedy. Picture: The Kennedy Center/YouTube
By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London
In 1962, Yo-Yo Ma played for President J.F. Kennedy, and the world heard his playing for the first time.
Here’s the moment a late great of the music world introduced a young star onto the stage, with little idea of the beloved, cultural figurehead he would become.
In a video published by The Kennedy Center, American conductor and TV host for the evening, Leonard Bernstein introduces seven-year-old cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his 11-year-old sister Yeou-Cheng Ma, to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower during An American Pageant of the Arts in November 1962.
The purpose of the telecast was to raise funds for the National Cultural Center, which was founded under Eisenhower’s administration and nurtured under Kennedy’s.
A smattering of applause is heard as the young sibling duo walk to centre stage, bow and take their seats.
Remarkably playing the entire thing from memory, Ma performs the first movement of French composer Jean-Baptiste Bréval’s Concertino No. 3 in A Major, in a piano-cello duet with his sister. Even as a child, Ma’s performances were imbued with a sense of peace and togetherness (watch below).
Introducing Ma, Bernstein celebrates the “double stream of art… flowing into and out of America”.
The great Mahler champion and West Side Story composer uses his speech to highlight “the attraction of our country to foreign artists, and scientists and thinkers, who have come not only to visit us, but often to join us as Americans, to become citizens of what to some has historically been the land of opportunity and to others the land of freedom.
“And in this great tradition, there has come to us, this year, a young man aged seven, bearing the name Yo-Yo Ma,” Bernstein continues.
Born in Paris, Ma was bathed in music from a young age – his mother, Marina Lu, a singer, and his father, Hiao-Tsiun Ma, a violinist and professor of music at Nanjing National Central University.
Ma took up the violin, piano and viola from very young, but settled on cello aged four. From the age of five, he was already performing before audiences in France.
Two years later, Ma and his family moved to the United States. And this, it appears, was the first time Ma was seen on television after cellist Pablo Casals – who was also on the bill that night – brought the young star to the organisers’ attention.
Leonard Bernstein introduces seven-year-old Yo-Yo Ma. Picture: The Kennedy Center/YouTube
“Now, here’s a cultural image for you to ponder as you listen,” Bernstein continues. “A seven-year-old Chinese cellist, playing old French music, for his new American compatriots.
“Welcome Yo-Yo Ma, and Yeou-Cheng Ma.”
And so, a cultural icon was born. With 18 Grammy Awards under his belt, Ma is arguably the world’s most celebrated classical cellist and has recorded music from American bluegrass to traditional Chinese melodies. A United Nations Messenger of Peace, Ma has also become a humanitarian icon and champion for the power of music in healing.
Yo-Yo’s sister, now Dr. Yeou-Cheng Ma, has often collaborated with her brother and had great success on the world stage as a child, playing with the Denver Symphony Orchestra at age 10. Now, she enriches young musical talent as the executive director of the Children’s Orchestra Society in New York.
Exactly a year after Ma and his sister’s performance, and two months after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, new legislation was signed into law renaming the National Cultural Center as a “living memorial” to John F. Kennedy.
Now, let’s all take a moment to remember the time Ma wrote to Bernstein, aged 10, asking if he would like to hear him play again:
How could the answer have been anything but “yes”...
