John Williams first met Yo-Yo Ma during his days with the Boston Pops and a friendship flourished.
From their first encounters, each recognized in the other an understanding that, as Williams simply puts it, “music is our oxygen.”
As Williams reflects, “I’d already learned about this wunderkind who played cello, and was very excited to meet him when he came to the Boston Pops for one of our television recordings.
I was enormously impressed with this fantastically mature art from such a young person.” Williams went on to compose in 1994 his Cello Concerto expressly for Ma, trying to capture the many personalities of the young cellist.
Williams said that he “cast the cello in ‘a kind of hero’s role’, but the hero the music conjures for me is no Hollywood figure but rather Don Quixote”.
From their first encounters, each recognized in the other an understanding that, as Williams simply puts it, “music is our oxygen.”
As Williams reflects, “I’d already learned about this wunderkind who played cello, and was very excited to meet him when he came to the Boston Pops for one of our television recordings.
I was enormously impressed with this fantastically mature art from such a young person.” Williams went on to compose in 1994 his Cello Concerto expressly for Ma, trying to capture the many personalities of the young cellist.
Williams said that he “cast the cello in ‘a kind of hero’s role’, but the hero the music conjures for me is no Hollywood figure but rather Don Quixote”.
