The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma
at Roy Thomson Hall
In Toronto on Thursday
The Silk Road conjures up conflicting images. On one hand, the trade route that once connected Europe and the Far East brought exotic luxuries from distant lands. On the other, the 4,500-kilometre journey across Central Asia was fraught with risk.
Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble brought both of these elements to Roy Thomson Hall on Thursday: precious gifts, yes, but also a trek across a challenging musical landscape.
It was back in 1998 that Ma - best known as the world's foremost cellist - began probing the musical connections between Europe and Asia. He founded a think tank called the Silk Road Project, which soon gave birth to the Silk Road Ensemble. Today, the ensemble comprises 60 musicians from Asia and Europe, although performances by the group usually involve only about a dozen at a time.
On Thursday evening, the West was represented by a pair of violins, a viola, a cello (Ma) and a double bass. From the East were a Japanese flute called a shakuhachi, a tar and a kamancheh from Iran (the latter two are both string instruments, although the first is strummed and the second is bowed), tabla drums from India and from China the lute-like pipa and a kind of mouth organ called a sheng.
For repertoire, the Silk Road Ensemble draws on many ancient traditions and has also commissioned numerous works from contemporary composers. Ma and company opened the concert with some of these recent pieces - and this is where the challenges began.
Gabriela Lena Frank's Ritmos Anchinos and Evan Ziporyn's Sulvasutra were intense, angular works - well crafted, but more "new music" than "world music." For an audience that had come in search of silks, they were like the Gobi Desert. Sapo Perapaskero's lively Turceasca, originally written for a Gypsy band (and arranged for the Silk Road Ensemble by Osvaldo Golijov) was a welcome oasis.
It wasn't until after the intermission that the musical riches of the Silk Road were laid out in full, opulent display. The second half of the program was devoted to one work: Layla and Majnun, a chamber opera by Uzeyir Hajibeyov, a composer from Azerbaijan who died in 1948. His compositional style was rooted in Central Asian traditions, but it's pretty clear that he knew a thing or two about Italian opera as well.
The two roles were sung by the Azeri singers Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova. In real life, they're father and daughter - but in the opera, they're two young lovers, pining for each other. The text, by the 16th-century poet Mohammad Fuzuli, overflows with purple prose. "My soul is on fire because we are apart," sings Majnun. "I do not have the strength to describe the sorrow in my heart," replies Layla.
Qasimov and Qasimova are experts in the mugham vocal tradition - an ornate, full-throated style characterized by what an ethnomusicologist would call "microtonal inflections." (In other words, they sing notes that would lie in between the keys of a piano.) Their performance was virtuosic and breathtakingly beautiful, transcending boundaries of culture and language.
To be sure, all the musicians in the Silk Road Ensemble are virtuosos. However, one player should be singled out - as a disappointment. Because the concert was billed as "The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma," some audience members may have hoped for more than a token showing from the group's illustrious leader. Ma played no real solos, spoke no words and made himself as unobtrusive as possible.
If this was a gesture of modesty, it was misplaced.