In an earlier post about Yo-Yo Ma's involvement with Elliott Carter's Cello Concerto I claimed to know - based on the live recording of one of Ma's performances - that Ma had no difficulties with the technical challenges posed by this concerto. A couple of days ago I received an email from the composer Wei-Chieh Lin (a student of Milton Babbitt) which considerably diminished my confidence in the above claim. Here is the pertinent excerpt:
I was at the NY premiere at Carnegie Hall. In fact, at the time I have gotten to know Carter a bit, and was with him at the dress rehearsal at Carnegie, and turned pages for him. At the rehearsal, Ma did not play that well, and he was struggling with many difficult rhythmic passages. I remember in the second section where there is a "duet" between the cello and the percussion section, Ma was constantly behind the orchestra, and he just couldn't get through them. Barenboim wasn't helping either, for him it was already a challenge to synchronize all the different rhythmic patterns. I vividly remember him playing several passages in the wrong clef. ... [However] Ma played the piece well in the concert, it was dramatic and lyrical at the same time.
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