100 Points
Nov 6
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Yo-Yo Ma’s multifaceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.
Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J.S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.
Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad.
His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as Hush with Bobby McFerrin and The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include a series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age 4. When he was 7, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies before pursuing a liberal arts education. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize, National Medal of the Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedy Center Honors, Polar Music Prize, and Birgit Nilsson Prize. He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration.
Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays four cellos: two modern instruments made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
Principal Conductor & Musical Advisor of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra
James Feddeck is Principal Conductor & Musical Advisor of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra for the 2025–26 season.
A conductor of international acclaim, Feddeck inspires audiences with a presence felt across the world’s finest stages. In North America, he has conducted major symphony orchestras including Chicago, Cleveland, Montreal, San Francisco, and Toronto. His performances with leading European orchestras include the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the national orchestras of France, Belgium, Ireland, and Scotland, and major UK orchestras. In addition, he regularly performs throughout Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
For the last five seasons, Feddeck served as principal director of Milan’s Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali, leading both opera and concert performances.
He has collaborated with many of the world’s foremost soloists, including Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Marc-André Hamelin, Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and Lise de la Salle. His recorded discography includes works by Georg Schumann for CPO with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (2017), as well as the music of Terry Riley and Dane Rudhyar with The Cleveland Orchestra and Calder Quartet (2022).
Feddeck was previously appointed to The Cleveland Orchestra’s conducting staff in 2009, during which he also served as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and led their first European tour.
Feddeck is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he received the Outstanding Alumni Award, and the Aspen Music Festival and School, which awarded him the Robert Harth and Aspen prizes. He was also the winner of the prestigious Solti Conducting Fellowship and the sixth Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition.
Nineteenth-century Vienna was dominated by two forms of popular music — the operetta and the waltz. Both were much discussed in the city’s famous coffee shops, and their best tunes were written up for performance everywhere — at home, in the streets and parks, as well as in theaters, ballrooms, and casinos. A great “Golden Age” of operetta (filled, of course, with waltzes) blossomed in the city beginning in the 1860s. Johann Strauss, Jr., then at the height of his popularity, turned his attention to the theater as Vienna’s economy boomed throughout the next decade.
The waltz had swept across Europe in the closing decades of the 18th century. The word itself came from the German verb walzen, which was originally not much more specific than the English word “dance.” Eventually, the waltz overtook the minuet in popularity, and the verb became a noun, first in English and then in German. In 1819, Carl Maria von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance set the pattern for what quickly became the typical Viennese waltz — not one dance, but a string of dances written together as a group, often alternating slower and faster sections, with the various tunes repeated and developed, almost like a short symphony.
The waltz experienced renewed popularity throughout the 19th century, propelled by the artistry and showmanship of the Strauss family of composers, beginning with Johann Strauss, Sr. (1804–1849). His touring orchestra, along with that of his even more famous son, Johann, Jr., spread the waltz craze throughout Europe and even to American shores.
Our evening begins with Strauss, Jr.’s Overture to Die Fledermaus (The Bat), premiered in 1874. The operetta’s storyline of disguises, romantic trysts, and mistaken identities, plus a full-fledged party onstage — with, of course, a series of great waltzes — has made it one of the composer’s most popular works. The overture features some of its best tunes, all mixed together as a perfectly exciting prelude to much fun and merriment.
— Eric Sellen
Eric Sellen is The Cleveland Orchestra’s editor emeritus. He previously was program book editor for 28 seasons.
Composer
“Don Giovanni! You invited me to supper — and I have come.” These words introduce one of the most dramatic scenes in the history of opera: the entrance of the Stone Guest (the statue of the Commendatore, or Governor). Don Giovanni killed the Commendatore in the very first scene of the opera, and at the end, his statue appears at the Don’s house to carry him off to Hell. It is fitting that this protagonist should be punished by a supernatural being. No ordinary womanizer, Don Giovanni is an almost mythical figure, symbolizing the boundless ambition of modern man who challenges the traditional world order and conventional morality.
The full title of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera contains the phrase II dissoluto punito (The Libertine Punished); Don Giovanni must pay for his transgressions with his life. Yet he is still a domineering presence compared to the other characters. The men — his servant Leporello and his rivals Don Ottavio and Masetto — are all powerless in their attempts to bring him down. The women — Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Zerlina — fall under his spell but ultimately resist his influence. In the end, it takes a transcendent power to defeat him.
The overture to Don Giovanni opens with an evocation of the Don’s damnation. The slow introduction (in Mozart’s most dramatic key, D minor) anticipates the moment where the Stone Guest enters the dining room. The main section of the overture (now in D major) does not return in the opera, yet the unusually high energy seems to justify those who hear it as the Don’s musical portrait. The strong rhythmic profile of its themes, the frequent dynamic contrasts, and the close succession of imitative entries in the middle section all carry the same uncommon energy that animates this character, one we can’t help but admire, no matter how reprehensible he is.
— Peter Laki
Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music at Bard College.
Overtures were originally orchestral pieces introducing an opera or theater performance. In the 19th century, however, they gradually became independent from the stage. Beethoven was one of the first to write concert overtures (The Consecration of the House), followed by such composers as Mendelssohn (The Hebrides), Brahms (the Academic Festival and Tragic overtures), and Tchaikovsky (1812 Overture).
Antonín Dvořák had published several of his early opera overtures as separate concert pieces, but it was not until his 50th year that he began work on concert overtures that were planned as such from the start. In 1891, he conceived a cycle of three overtures to be performed together as an orchestral trilogy. He entitled the cycle Nature, Life, and Love; the individual overtures were called In Nature’s Realm, Carnival, and Othello. Dvořák thought very highly of this cycle. In 1893, he wrote to his publisher, Fritz Simrock: “I think they are my best orchestral works,” even though he had already finished his “New World” Symphony by that time. He presented the cycle both at his April 1892 farewell concert in Prague before leaving for the United States and at his first concert in New York later that year.
The second overture, Carnival, is like a miniature symphony in four “movements,” played without a break. But the last “movement” is nothing but a recapitulation of the first. Therefore, the overture can also be seen as an irregular single movement, with slow and fast sections inserted in the middle. Whichever way we look at it, the work is framed by a happy and exuberant carnival march with cymbals, tambourine, and triangle. Then the brass and the percussion drop out, and the violins play an expressive melody in a distinctly operatic style.
The third theme is introduced by the violins as the percussion reenters in a hushed pianissimo. This theme grows to a full orchestral fortissimo, only to be suddenly interrupted by the winds, violins, and harp (the only instrument that has been silent so far). This passage serves as a transition to the lyrical slow section featuring solos for the woodwinds and violin. The melody of this section is also identical to the main theme of the overture In Nature’s Realm, providing a strong link between the two works of the cycle.
Another sudden interruption brings us to the next section, which has the playfulness and vibrancy of a scherzo (the third movement in a typical symphony). Thematically, however, this is not an independent section since it is based on the transformations of some of the material heard at the beginning. Finally, the march returns, and the piece ends in a festive mood with exquisite, joyful abandon.
World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma returns to Severance for an unforgettable evening of music with The Cleveland Orchestra. Conducted by James Feddeck, the concert opens with a trio of overtures that trace a musical path from Vienna to Prague. Ma then joins the Orchestra for Dvořák’s sumptuous Cello Concerto, a cornerstone of the Romantic repertoire. Known for his deep connection to this work, Ma’s interpretation is considered definitive, and his performances and recordings of the concerto have captivated generations of listeners.
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