Educational Media Reviews Online

This series consists of 6 videocassettes: The Music Garden, The Sound of the Carceri, Falling Down Stairs, Sarabande, Stuggle for Hope, Six Gestures

Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello (BWV 1007-1012) are the basis for this massive arts-integration project conceived by violoncellist Yo-Yo Ma. Ma, who has performed the Suites from a very young age, has attempted to reveal greater levels of meaning to the pieces. For these films, Ma has collaborated with artists of widely different mediums to reinterpret Bach's Suites in new dramatic, visual, intellectual, and spiritual contexts. Each film features one of the Suites performed by Ma in tandem with a non-musical artist, and benefits from the vision of a different director. Thus, the kaleidoscopic nature of the series seen as a whole presents a spectrum of visions representing themes of artistic communication, inspiration, and creativity.

For the First Suite, Ma worked with landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy to design a "Music Garden" to reflect his associations of the piece with natural growth and beauty. The resulting film documents the efforts of both artists to realize the designs of Messervy, first unsuccessfully in Boston, then in Toronto. By the end of the film's shooting schedule, Toronto's garden was still under construction. Although the final results are thus withheld from the viewer, the film offers some dazzling effects in compensation: the cellist performing movements from the Suite while a paradisical garden literally springs up all around him.

The designs of 18th-century architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi are linked with the Second Cello Suite in 'The Sound of the Carceri.' Although the justification for this unlikely combination is rather unconvincing, the resulting effects are wondrous: we see and hear Ma's performance in a cavernous computer-simulated realization of Piranesi's prison designs.

The most effective parts to the series involve movement interpretation. "Falling Down Stairs" features the Mark Morris Dance Company performing the Third Suite. The Fifth Suite offers a performance by Kabuki dancer Tamasaburo Bandi which emphasizes, according to Ma, the suite's deep spirituality, conveying a sense of grief and profound loss. In both, the collaborative process depicted on camera is as fascinating as the final choreographed realizations of the music, as both musician and interpreters strive to unite their visions of elevating Bach's music to higher artistic planes.

The Sixth Suite features the champion skaters Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean in a captivating and beautifully photographed ice dance, which is occasionally projected on various buildings and other locations in New York City. Out of all in the series, this makes the greatest effort to provide a historical context to the music; and actor portraying Bach appears between movements to provide commentary on the composition of the suites and his personal circumstances during that period.

"Sarabande," a film written and directed by Atom Egoyan, is the only disappointing part of this series. Although there are some interesting and well-acted scenes connoting music as a positive force for humanity and as a healing agent, the sometimes too-melodramatic film seems incomplete, ending with too many subplots left unresolved. It seems similar to a soap opera abruptly cancelled midseason.

Overall, the series offers a multifaceted view of how 'classic' works of art can be reexplored for greater depths of understanding, and reinterpreted in fresh, unprecedented ways. Yo-Yo Ma deserves much acclaim for his originality and dedication to this project, and of course for his performances of the Suites, which are technically flawless and often charged with emotional intensity. Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach is highly recommended for institutions with extensive liberal arts programs.