Yo-Yo Ma: Our Common Nature

“Music has always been about connection for me,” Yo-Yo Ma tells Apple Music. “It’s part of how we remember all that we have in common: our humanity and our planet.” Ma’s love of nature suffuses the music here, including the legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré’s recording of Dvořák’s Silent Woods. “To me, nobody plays this work better,” Ma says. “It’s an impassioned outpouring of human emotion.” A second great cellist, Pablo Casals, also features. “I had the privilege of meeting Pablo when I was seven,” Ma recalls. “His ‘El Cant dels Ocells’ (‘Song of the Birds’) is a Catalan folk song that became a kind of anthem of freedom for Casals, articulated through the sounds of birds, those most free of creatures.” “These are tracks that, for me, remind us that we do not live in isolation from one another and that humans are not apart from the natural world,” continues Ma. “It’s music that celebrates our common nature and [asks] us to love one another and the planet that we all share.”