Yo Yo Ma,

despite his fine playing of the two Haydn cello concertos, ceased to be a favorite of mine after his disastrous 'cellified re-do of the Mozart Kegel trio, and some rankly inauthentic Vivaldi (despite, I think, performing it on period instruments). But, having just heard (on Internet Radio) his and Emmanuel Ax's ¡magical! rendition of the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, I am prepared to re-embrace him.  I go back and forth with 'cellists.  Never forgetting that il beato Luigi Boccherini was one--meseemeth that, like Greaseball Tenors, they're always taking liberties (¡with Bach and Mozart!)--quite unpardonable liberties.  [Phil and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about the late, great (big, fat) Luciano Pavarotti, and Phil was saying that--say what I might about his Greasy rendition of non-Romantic, non-Italian music--within his elephantine two square yards* of Verdi, Boïto, and Puccini, Pavarotti was a god.  And I agreed. "But still," I said, "why can't Greaseballs sing Mozart?"  And Phil, chuckling, said, "I think you just answered your own question."]  Speaking of two such Greaser-like violoncellists, Mstislav Rostropovitch and Pablo Casals--was anything ever more slurpily, droolingly inappropriate than these two's hyper-romantic versions of the Bach 'cello suites? And just think of the reverse alchemy of what Casals, as conductor, did to the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (K. 364)! turning purest gold into dullest lead.

*  Pun:  referring to Jane Austen's "two square inches of ivory" (Latin elephantinus = ivory).