COMMENT:
Very well, I'd never actually heard of Yo-Yo Ma before he took to Twitter this week to post a video of himself performing a piece of music which has since gone viral with 35,000 likes. He plays the cello. He has recorded more than 90 albums and received 18 Grammy Awards - no, wait, the other way around. The music he performs on Twitter is Bach's Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. The video is one minute, one second long. He gave it a hashtag: #songsofcomfort, to underline this was a very special, very timely performance in our age of the virus and all its tragedy, its grief, its death.
He wrote on his post, "This music has been with me for 60 years. It's seen me through times of stress, loss, joy, and transition. It's connected me to others all over the world and helped me to understand life in new ways."
This music has been with me for 60 years. It's seen me through times of stress, loss, joy, and transition. It's connected me to others all over the world and helped me to understand life in new ways.
— Yo-Yo Ma (@YoYo_Ma) April 12, 2020
Bach: Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major #songsofcomfort pic.twitter.com/w6P148DmKS
God it was boring. He sawed this way and that, raising a low, dull moan from his instrument for the longest one minute, one second I've ever heard. I was hoping for a masterpiece, something that would resonate with these times of woe and dread, work its way into a universal yet private zone of distress deep within our hearts and then find a way out, reach for the stars, offer a message of beauty – I felt a bit let down, really.