When Slava Met Yo-Yo

June 28, 2011. Dateline Washington. Slow news day. “Limits on video games,” “President waging charm offensive,” “Bachmann, Blagojevich…” zzzzzzz.

Harp music, image fades… flash back to 1976. Spring is in the air and we’re seated in the balcony section of Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

Yo-Yo Ma was pre-med at Harvard in those days. He hadn’t yet admitted to being a cellist, but a lot of us in Cambridge went to hear him in the neighborhood college houses, and we knew this young talent would break through onto the world stage in a matter of time.

Mstislav Rostropovich was still completely a cellist back then, hadn’t yet taken over the conductor’s baton. He had made it out of the USSR but wasn’t exactly an American citizen yet. You were a fool if you passed up an opportunity to hear him play, which he did tirelessly and often, only moving around a lot and hard to chase down.

The announcement of a Rostropovich master class went by town crier back in those pre-FB days, and a couple hundred of us got wind that Yo-Yo would be one of the players.

It was like an immense practical joke on Rostropovich, he was the only person in the packed house who didn’t know yet about Yo-Yo. The latter still belonged only to us, we who knew him and sat with him in coffee houses on Dunster Street and Winthrop, and encouraged him to take the plunge and let someone else do the pre-med.

Rostropovich was a sublime player, if a difficult person. His English was still shaky. The solid thing about him was his wife Galina, who backed him up as a flawless accompanist on the piano. They took the stage at Sanders, the Victorian hall with creaky floorboards and memories of past events encrusted in its mute walls. Here Teddy Roosevelt had spoken, and Churchill, and Martin Luther King. Janos Starker had spooked the hall with an encore of Bach’s haunting Sarabande in c minor, a communion with the Dead.

The tension was palpable in the hall. The 200 observers all knew this would be an occasion for the annals – what if Napoleon had met Pushkin? Or Chekhov, Theodore Dreiser? This was the Real Thing, we knew this would be a moment that might somehow survive even the planet.

Two or three fine young cellists had the courage to mount the stage and go through the motions with the Master. Rostropovich was a skilled teacher if condescending. What he couldn’t express in English, he demonstrated on his ‘cello, dwarfing the technique of those who dared to share a stage with him. Not merely European, but Russian, he was unforgiving of flaws and unmanly tones. In one case he showed how his bow could be imagined as a string of sausages, lurching every eight inches in unsteady progress across the D string. Then he showed how a single bow stroke could remove the sausage links in the sound, and everyone in the room got it. “No sausage, no sausage!” he said, knowing the general laughter would cost the student’s self esteem maybe forever, and what of it.

Then it was Yo-Yo’s turn. He was not yet histrionic back them – quite the opposite. If I remember correctly back 35 years, he even approached the stage with head bowed. If only we could have him back now, the way he was then.

Slava put his hand condescendingly on Yo-Yo’s shoulder and said, “What you are going to play for us this evening?” (He didn’t say “young man.” He definitely inverted the interrogative.)

In almost a whimper Yo-Yo said “Dvorak ‘cello concerto in b minor.” Though it was almost inaudible, the crowd went nuts when they understood Yo-Yo was going to take on the signature ’cello piece which – with the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied ‘Cello – is the measure by which cellists have been judged since 1895.

Slava looked perplexed but fair is fair, so Galina got out the reduced orchestral score and uncinkled the pages on the piano stand. From the first phrases of Yo-Yo’s Dvorak, Slava looked startled, actually disarmed. I think he knew within a couple of minutes that this exotic lad would one day be his rival in the small but conspicuous world of solo cellists.

It was customary to cut off the student after about 15 measures to get to the pedagogical part of the session. In this case he didn’t. He let Yo-Yo play almost to the end of the first movement of the concerto. He looked dazed, I can’t guess what went through his mind.

The lesson proceeded, Slava brightened up and exceeded even his normal energetic level. His suggestions had to do more with interpretation than technique, which Yo-Yo had clearly nailed. The rest is history though I’ve never seen it reported anywhere. At the end of the lesson, Slava embraced Yo-Yo in front of a highly emotional audience and said this time, “Young man, you are a great talent. What was your name, again?”

“Yo-Yo Ma,” said Yo-Yo, head still bowed.

“No,” said Slava, struggling with his English. “I mean, your real name.”

The audience went nuts as Yo-Yo repeated his name, and the practical joke resolved and was over. We exited into the scented spring night.

Dan Whitman is Assistant Professor of Foreign Policy at the Washington Semester Program, American University. As Public Diplomacy officer in USIA and the Department of State for more than 25 years, he drafted and edited speeches for U.S. ambassadors in Denmark, Spain, South Africa, Cameroon, Haiti, and Guinea-Conakry. A senior Foreign Service Officer, he retired in 2009 from the Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State.