Yo Yo Ma

A few weeks ago in St. Petersburg, Ralph Kirshbaum lost his cool.An American cello student walked up to him and asked: "Excuse me, sir, who do you think is the greatest cellist you've heard here in the last few days?"There couldn't have been a better time for such a question: Most of the world's great cellists were in St. Petersburg for the International Cello Congress. But Kirshbaum was the wrong guy to ask."What does it mean when we elevate someone to be 'the best'?" he says, shaking his head sadly as he relates the story.

"I feel good for myself and good for the orchestra," is how Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director David Zinman reacted when told he and the BSO, along with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, had won two Grammys for their recording of concertos by Bela Bartok, Ernest Bloch and the late Stephen Albert.The record, which was released on the Sony Classics label as "The New York Album," won Grammys in two categories: Classical Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra, and Classical Contemporary Composition (for the Albert Cello Concerto)

For their recordings of three cello concertos with Yo-Yo Ma, David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra were nominated yesterday for Grammys in two categories.The "The New York Album," on the Sony Classical label, was nominated for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for its recording of the late Stephen Albert's Cello Concerto, which Albert wrote specifically for Ma, Zinman and the BSO. It was also nominated for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance With Orchestra.If the recording wins, it will mark the second time in four years that Zinman, Ma and the BSO have won a Grammy.

This year will be remembered musically for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's tour of the Far East. The concerts the BSO and music director David Zinman gave in Korea, Taiwan and Japan over a four-week period got better and better. In Japan particularly, where the BSO gave 14 concerts in 18 days, the orchestra scored an almost unprecedented triumph.It went to Japan as an unknown orchestra, one that Japanese audiences almost certainly regarded as merely a backup group for superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma. But by the end of the second of their concerts in Tokyo's Suntory Hall, Japan's premier classical music venue, the BSO and Zinman had themselves achieved stardom.

TOKYO -- Last night in Suntory Hall, the international arena in which the world's great orchestras perpetually battle, Baltimoreans could have been as proud of their symphony as they would be of the Orioles if they had just clinched the pennant.The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and music director David Zinman gave perhaps the greatest concert in their history together, surpassing even the fondly remembered performance in St. Petersburg that brought the orchestra's 1987 tour of Europe to a triumphant close.

Oyabe, Japan -- Yo-Yo Ma did not have to come to this tiny town yesterday.In order to make an afternoon rehearsal for an evening performance with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the cellist took an 18-hour flight from his home in Boston, went through customs in Tokyo, took a second flight to Toyama, where the BSO has been staying, then got in a car and drove to the new concert hall here, which rises out of the obscurity of Oyabe's rice...

That Lynn Harrell, this week's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra soloist, has not performed with the orchestra since 1979 is startling. Harrell, the second busiest and second most famous cellist in the world, has not feuded with the orchestra or its music director, David Zinman.It's simply that BSO audiences get to hear basically only two cello soloists in subscription concerts: Yo-Yo Ma, who is the Hertz to Harrell's Avis and who visits the BSO every other season, and Mihaly Virizlay, who is the orchestra's principal cellist and who appears as a soloist every year.

Did you mail a card? Send flowers? At least call? You know why you did (and you'd better have) . . . because she would forgive you even if you forgot.That's the essence of moms. Drives you nuts, doesn't it? Happy Mother's Day.You see, the thing about moms is that they're, well, I don't have to tell you. You've had one. We've all had one. It's our most basic shared experience.Ma-ma is the first word a baby learns. As we know from watching TV, "Hi, Mom!" are the first two words a football player learns.

Yo-Yo Ma does not believe in making things easy on himself.It was not enough for him that his sold-out concerts this week with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra would feature him in three concertos. The great cellist, perhaps the most popular string player in the world, is scheduled to play Bloch's "Schelomo," the late Stephen Albert's Cello Concerto and Bela Bartok's Concerto for Viola in a transcription for cello.But when Ma walks on stage at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to play the Bartok, a lot of people are going to gape.

Tod Machover, a 37-year-old musician with electrified, Beethoven-like hair, is one part J. S. Bach and one part Antonio Stradivari. He's both a composer and an instrument maker. And it's both the computer-driven music and the computerized instruments he creates that have put him at the cutting edge of music today.His 20-minute "Towards the Center" for six instruments and live computer electronics will be performed tonight at a Discovery concert in the Peabody Institute's Friedberg Hall by David Zinman and members of the Baltimore Symphony.