Kathryn Stott and Yo-Yo Ma interview: ‘We’re free to explore in the same moment, and we take risks – but it’s all genuine’

Richard Bratby
Friday, November 29, 2024

Kathryn Stott’s retirement brings to a close a four-decade-long duo partnership with Yo-Yo Ma, one filled with fun and adventure, as they tell Richard Bratby

Some musical relationships just work. The cellist Yo‑Yo Ma and the pianist Kathryn Stott have been playing together as duo partners for four decades now. It’s not as if they finish each other’s sentences, exactly: they’re both too thoughtful for that; but as they chat about their careers in a Berlin hotel, on the last leg of their farewell tour, there’s an easiness – a frankness – that’s the opposite of melancholy. Stott has announced her retirement from the concert stage at the end of 2024, but from the way the pair bounce ideas off each other, you wouldn’t guess that they’ll be giving their final concert together at the end of the week.

Still, at times like these it’s natural to reminisce; and this, after all, is a musical friendship that spans two professional lifetimes. ‘We met totally by chance,’ explains Stott. ‘Without telling a long story, I found Yo-Yo and his wife living in my flat in 1978.’ What – when you were a student? ‘It was in London,’ says Stott. ‘Fitzjohn’s Avenue,’ interjects Ma. ‘Fitzjohn’s Avenue,’ agrees Stott. ‘I was a student at the Royal College of Music. The flat had been sublet without me knowing, and without them knowing – and there they were. So that’s how we met. What was so great is that, actually, we met just as young people. I didn’t recognise Yo-Yo. I’d never heard of him, even when he said his name, which was marvellous. We started off as friends. We were friends for six years.’

‘It was six years before we played a note together!’ adds Ma. ‘Nothing to do with school, or college, or anything. A completely chance meeting.’ And why not? Life sometimes throws people together: a Chinese American cellist from New York who’d played for President Kennedy at age seven and a self-described ‘super-poor working-class’ piano teacher’s daughter from a council estate in Nelson, Lancashire, bumped into each other in Hampstead and simply clicked.

Did they ever worry that playing together might spoil the friendship? ‘No, I think we just set out on a kind of adventure,’ says Stott. Ma agrees. ‘I knew that Kathy loved playing with string players, and that she liked the cello a lot. There was something so natural about her – she was someone who just spoke her mind, who was incredibly honest, who was a very loyal friend. My wife first suggested it. She said, “Kathy loves playing with string players. Why don’t you do something together?”’ Stott smiles and says, ‘So we can thank your wife for that.’ It sounds like the easiest thing in the world, and according to Stott, that’s exactly how it was. ‘There was no “let’s aim for this in five years” or anything. We just got going and then we never really stopped.’

Ma dives back in: ‘The thing is, in your early twenties, you’re exploring the world, you’re exploring the people you meet. Everything is new, is fun, is happening for the first time. I think we were in thrall to this sense of exploration, which basically continued. The fact that we lived on two separate continents, across the pond from one another, never got in the way. Kathy would visit the States occasionally. I would visit England, and Europe …’ Stott adds, ‘We always kept in touch.’

Even now, that shared journey continues. It’s true that ‘Merci’, the pair’s latest (and presumably final) album together has a bittersweet quality. But equally, it’s an exploration, taking the music of Fauré (whom Stott describes as her musical ‘soulmate’) as the starting point for a whole new adventure in French music. The composers on ‘Merci’ – Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Viardot and Lili and Nadia Boulanger – form an extended musical family of teachers, mentors, pupils and friends.

True to Lancastrian form, Stott is self-deprecating about the album’s concept: ‘I’m not sure there’s any great logic behind any of it, but there are various strands. I’m a great Fauré enthusiast, and I knew that there was an important centenary coming up in 2024. That was a little bit of an idea. So you chuck it in the pot and ask, “Well, what else is interesting?” Nadia Boulanger was another strand, a very important one. I played to her as a young girl, and one of Yo-Yo’s former teachers was a Boulanger student. We’ve often spoken about her over our 40 years. Her name has cropped up a lot, hasn’t it?’

Ma’s face lights up. Stott is talking about Luise Vosgerchian (1922-2000), the American pianist who studied with Boulanger and whose own pupils included John Adams and Bobby McFerrin, as well as Ma himself. ‘She was probably the single most influential music teacher I had,’ says Ma. ‘Really – a pianist teaching a cellist? Luise liberated me from being a neurotic instrumentalist constantly thinking, “I’ve got to get this right.” She gave me the tools to explore any music by asking the most basic questions. We started looking at Haydn piano sonatas, and usually at the very end of the first movement, there was a surprise. Luise would say, “OK, let’s do the forensic analysis: how did Haydn get there?” We were looking at the very basics of musical storytelling, the Nadia Boulanger idea of the grande ligne. A piece of music is alive as long as a phrase never dies, and your job is to keep the patient alive.’

Ma continues: ‘Luise was a legendary teacher. She taught at Harvard, and she was the pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nadia Boulanger actually lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the Second World War; she taught at the Longy School of Music and was the first woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Luise became celebrated because, like Boulanger, she didn’t only teach the best students; she would wake up the musical sensibilities of anybody who came to her. I love that value system. All the music on our album came from people who taught in a way that is different from the idea of a teacher as the person you go to for a one-hour lesson on Saturdays. They cared about their students in a much more holistic way.’

Bowing out after four decades as a duo: Ma and Stott performing at the Konserthuset, Stockholm, on November 3, 2024, as part of their series of farewell concerts (photography: Yanan Li/Konserthuset Stockholm)


And so the title ‘Merci’ represents a ‘thank you’, after all these decades, to Ma’s and Stott’s teachers – and more than that, to all the great teachers who inspired them in turn. ‘Right,’ agrees Ma. ‘One of the things that we’ve often talked about are teachers. Even before we landed on this title, we often talked about thanking our teachers, because my experience with teachers is that they teach you, you learn things, then you go away and often they don’t hear from you again.’ Stott interjects, jokingly, ‘Well, sometimes they go away and we don’t hear from them any more!’ Ma laughs, and continues: ‘So there’s not often the sense of completion that comes from someone giving you a gift, and you thanking them for it. I think the role of really great or influential teachers is not always acknowledged – in the way that Kathy talks about Fauré, and the relationship between him and Saint-Saëns, for example.’

Stott takes up the theme: ‘Well, I don’t know about every single person, but I can tell you about Fauré. His lessons were legendary because often he hardly said anything. There are accounts of him being quite lackadaisical about actually turning up to lessons; then he’d arrive and say maybe one thing, and that was it. Actually, Nadia is quoted as saying that she didn’t know what he’d taught her, but that it was an enormous amount – which is a fantastic statement.

‘The nice thing is that there’s this great long tree of teaching and learning. Saint-Saëns was Fauré’s teacher and a great supporter and friend all his life. Then there’s Nadia Boulanger, who was a student of Fauré and supported him from the other side. There are strands linked to everybody, really. Pauline Viardot – an amazing woman! She really supported Fauré. Saint-Saëns had introduced them. So they’re all linked. And, of course, Lili Boulanger was the sister of Nadia. It was nice to join up all those dots. Last but not least, the album is also a sort of merci to each other for this 40-year journey that we’ve had.’

It’s a journey that ends this week – at least, in public. The concerts will be over, but the friendship continues. What’s the secret of an enduring musical partnership? ‘It’s having an iterative relationship, built on mutual exploration and a sharing of similar values,’ says Ma. And those values? Stott jumps in: ‘Oh, I think a sort of integrity in what we’re doing that transfers into musical life and on to the stage. When we’re playing, everything we do, at whatever time, is real. We’re free to explore in the same moment, and we take risks – but it’s all genuine. It’s been a fantastic dialogue.’

Ma offers, ‘It’s kindness and good ego-placement.’ To which Stott responds, ‘That’s a good phrase.’ And Ma enlarges: ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a moment of feeling that we were trying to outdo each other. We’ve never said, “I’m right, and it’s my way or the highway.” It’s been more like, “What is that? What are you trying to do?” Or, “Try this. Do this.” I think ego-placement cannot be overemphasised, because so often the walls come up when someone says, “This is my voice and I can’t be heard.” Well, we’ve been able to do something about that. Except for when Kathy’s threatened me: whenever I’ve irritated her, she’d say, “Wait until tonight, because I’m going to play really loud!”’

Laughter again: and if there’s some benighted corner of the musical world where the pianist in a duo is still regarded as an ‘accompanist’, it’s unknown to Ma and Stott. ‘Try playing the Franck sonata without the piano!’ retorts Stott. ‘We’ve always played with the lid up,’ says Ma. Stott agrees: ‘I think perhaps only once in the 40 years did we have a piano that was basically a tank, and we thought, “OK, let’s try it with the lid down.” But it’s up to me to control the piano: the lid doesn’t make things louder, it’s just about resonance. The whole point is that it’s a two-way conversation. Otherwise, it would be deadly boring, wouldn’t it? If you had one person who was going on for a very long time …’

Many in the musical world wish that Stott would go on for longer. The clock’s running down, but these two still have places to be and music to play, at least for a few more days. They play their last concert together in Paris on November 9, and a little over a month later, on December 11, 2024, Stott bows out as a solo recitalist in Liverpool, not far from where she began. ‘I’ve always had a very, very close relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic,’ she says. ‘They were the first professional orchestra I played with. They supported me more than anybody, right at the beginning. And they just had the right hall for my final recital. I didn’t want something too big. We’re in the Tung Auditorium, which is 400 seats, so it’s very cosy.’

Still, why stop now? Stott is clearly buzzing with energy and ideas, and at the peak of her musical form. Of course, she’s not retiring from music, only from the concert hall. Stott is an energetic teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, she’s just presented a BBC Radio 3 documentary on Fauré and she is known as a promoter of neglected repertoire – in the 1990s she organised a large-scale Fauré festival in Manchester and a celebration of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann in Liverpool (‘Before they were fashionable!’ she jokes). And yet she’s always maintained that at some point she’d stop playing in public. That point, it seems, has arrived.

‘You’re right, I’ve always said it,’ agrees Stott, ‘but I have no idea why. Then about three years ago, a few things lined up. There was the pandemic – I lost a couple of friends early. Then … I don’t know. I sensed that time was going superfast. I wanted more space. I have a granddaughter now. I want more family time, and I just want less discipline and more chaos, because I don’t want to be so scheduled.

‘I don’t want people to misunderstand me when I say that I want to be free of the discipline of practice, because I’ve actually really enjoyed my practice. But it is a discipline. I don’t expect anybody to come to hear me in a concert if I haven’t done my work. I’m pretty ruthless with myself, and I want to go out while I’m still in top shape. A few times when I was young, I was taken to concerts of, well, let’s say, “people towards the end of their professional life” on the premise that they were marvellous musicians, and I remember being disappointed. Maybe that was me being too harsh, but as a child that registered, and maybe that’s had some effect.’

Stott continues, ‘Obviously I still intend to be busy, but I also intend to have days where I have no idea what’s going to happen. I really look forward to that!’ Any regrets? Things left undone? ‘I’ve never had those thoughts. I’ve had the most fantastic year.’

And in the meantime, she’s going out in the same uncompromising, inquisitive spirit – ending her final recital with a brand new commission from Graham Fitkin, specially designed to keep her pushing herself to the last. ‘I said, “Graham, you have to write me one more piece and it’s going at the end, and that’s it. Keep me busy.” Boy, he has! He’s written me an unbelievable piece that keeps me focused right up to the very last note. If I hit the last note, that’s a miracle.’ Knowing Stott, she’ll pull it off without a backward glance. ‘I’ve done more than I ever thought I would,’ she says, as we sign off. ‘I’ve done as much as I can, and I think you can’t ask for more.’

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