Barenboim, Ma in perfect tune in the afternoon[/b]

January 18, 2005
BY WYNNE DELACOMA [/b]Classical Music Critic

When Daniel Barenboim is in town, Symphony Center sometimes takes on the aspect of a high-toned house party. A superb pianist, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's music director likes nothing better than to invite some of his closest friends in to play chamber music with him. With friends like Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman, these sessions all but guarantee sold-out houses at Symphony Center, including scores of music lovers willing to squeeze themselves into rows of folding chairs onstage.
On Sunday afternoon, Barenboim's friend of choice was Yo-Yo Ma, an artist who has no trouble selling out houses on his own. Ma is a frequent guest at Symphony Center, appearing with Barenboim in chamber recitals as well as orchestral performances. But it has been five years since the two sat down by themselves at Symphony Center for a concert of music for cello and piano.
Sometimes Barenboim's chamber concerts revisit familiar territory, but he and Ma explored a somewhat different path Sunday. The concert closed with one of the most famous works for cello and piano, Cesar Franck's A Major Sonata, originally written for violin and piano. But before intermission came two less familiar pieces, Chopin's G Minor Cello Sonata, Op. 65, and Debussy's Cello Sonata, composed in 1915.
Ma and Barenboim do not travel the world as a performing duo, but they have performed together so often that they understand each other's musical impulses. They are both virtuosos of the first order and can immediately respond to whatever technical challenges the other might toss out.
But they are also insanely busy musicians, and practice time for Sunday's concert was doubtless at a premium. The Emerson String Quartet hammers out its approach to Beethoven over years of rehearsals and performances. Ma and Barenboim played Chopin, Debussy and Franck on the fly.
But that was part of the pleasure. At times, especially in the Franck sonata, Barenboim was so dominant, his richly textured piano setting such a windswept, aggressive pace that Ma had to work hard to hold his own. But he did, his bow digging into the cello strings and finding a tensile, powerful melodic line as assertive and headstrong at Barenboim's own.
In the Chopin, however, Barenboim often settled into a supporting role, offering dappled, gently contoured accompaniment to Ma's more prominent cello song.
Both musicians were sensitively attuned to each other, and their musical conversation was particularly acute in the Debussy sonata. This was not heavily perfumed, affectedly misty Debussy. But a sense of expansive time and space infused the performance. Lingering over a pause, stretching a phrase to its utmost, Ma and Barenboim were musical soul mates, each more than willing and able to listen and respond to the other.