Yo Yo Ma, 65 today

David K. Nelson says:

At the risk of offending, and perhaps this joke has long passed its prime. Most of mine have.

Many of you may know, or know of, the excellent pianist James Dick, a Clifford Curzon pupil and closely associated with the respected Round Top Festival Institute which he founded. So the joke, told to me in all seriousness by someone who I knew had played at Round Top … that one year it included an all star piano trio with Yo-Yo Ma and Czech virtuoso Josef Suk. It was known as — again I apologize for this — the Suk-Ma-Dick Trio. [Insert groan here.]

Of course the impossibility of the joke is listing the violinist’s name first. When Jascha Heifetz suggested such a billing for the “Million Dollar Trio” Rubinstein told him “Jascha, even if you were God, it would still be the Rubinstein-God-Piatigorsky Trio.” Which reminds me of another bad joke I will tell someday.

But speaking of Yo Yo Ma, many many years ago when the Milwaukee Symphony had open rehearsals (for $1, later increased), Leonard Rose was engaged to play the Elgar Concerto and my parents went to the rehearsal (I was away at school) to hear Rose. They were disappointed to learn that Rose was unavailable so what they heard was a rehearsal of the Elgar orchestra part only and the other music on the program. As it happens Rose was ill or otherwise indisposed, and his pupil Yo Yo Ma, maybe not yet 20, filled in at the last minute, with no rehearsal, and as I recall he had never played the Elgar with orchestra before. Oh yes … and the local public television station was televising the concert! No pressure there … the telecast, which I did get to see, was marvelous, and if I remember right Ma played from memory. I think Kenneth Schermerhorn was conducting. I assume someone somewhere has a tape.