Yo-Yo Ma, DSO link up for stirring season-opening gala as orchestra nets $1.1 million
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An old tradition returned in grand new style on a joyful Saturday night at Orchestra Hall.
For the first time in two decades, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra threw a season-opening gala, this time accompanied by the virtuoso playing and winsome charms of cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Ma, as playful onstage as he was engrossed with the music, treated the Orchestra Hall audience to an expressive performance of Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto with the DSO — and was duly rewarded with five rousing ovations.
The cellist returned to close out the concert with an impromptu, galvanizing solo performance, blending the spiritual standard “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” with a bit of Dvorak’s 9th (“New World Symphony”).
With DSO music director Jader Bignamini at the stand, animated and conducting from memory as usual, the program also included the orchestra’s vivacious “Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture” (Glinka) and a dynamic, cinematic performance of Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from "Daphnis and Chloe."
The night was a bona fide hit, and not just musically: The event raised more than $1.1 million for the DSO, said organization President and CEO Erik Rönmark. The orchestra’s musicians donated their services for the evening.
The snazzy soiree, which formally kicked off the 2023-2024 season, was the DSO’s first season-opening gala since the inauguration of the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center in 2003.
Such opening-night galas will be a fixture going forward, said Rönmark, restoring what he called “a beloved annual tradition.”
“Having a splash like this puts us front and center for everyone,” said the DSO president, who described the gala a way to ignite momentum for a season like the one now underway, with its 150-plus concerts ahead.
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A red carpet and DJ greeted guests arriving for a pre-concert cocktail reception, which drew a mix of young and old DSO patrons, many of them decked out in elegant evening wear. Following the performance, hundreds headed to the Cube space inside the Max for a gala dinner that included filet and sea bass.
“That’s the way to start a season,” Rönmark told the dinner crowd.
Having spent more than a year partly stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic that began shortly after his January 2020 appointment, Bignamini has at last been enjoying the sorts of big Orchestra Hall moments he was relishing upon his Detroit arrival. Saturday’s season-opening gala was certainly among them, he said.
He chose a program of music befitting the occasion, including the Glinka piece, which had a personal resonance, and the multicolored Ravel suite, one of the most challenging in all of music. With the latter, Bignamini was impressed when DSO players nailed it with “no mistakes” during an initial rehearsal last week.
“I said, 'Wow, this is my orchestra,'” he recounted. “I was so proud about that.”
And then there was the Dvorak concerto — a mutual favorite of Bignamini and Ma. Saturday’s concert was their first together.
The DSO music director was stirred by his time with the popular cello master.
Bignamini said he came away impressed by Ma’s “intelligence, his love for music and for art. He enjoys every moment, every second, onstage. It’s so good to have this type of energy from the soloist, from the audience. There’s a special chemistry. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s an explosion of energy.”
Bignamini will next conduct the DSO Oct. 13-15 in a program including pieces by Rachmaninoff, Brahms and Weber, and will lead eight more of the 2023-24 season’s classical programs. The full season schedule, including pops concerts, jazz events and other performances, is at dso.org.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Yo-Yo Ma, DSO link up for season-opening gala on a $1.1 million night
