Yo Yo Ma 6 Chello Suites

This is a charming, lovely, beautiful, even adorable recording just as charming and adorable as Yo-Yo Ma's previous "Simply Baroque" recording. Suffice it to say, if you liked the first you'll love the second. It offers more beautiful tunes by Bach and gorgeous concertos by Boccherini performed with exquisite taste and musicianship by the world's best-loved cellist, accompanied by Ton Koopman, one the world's greatest Bach interpreters, and recorded in warm, atmospheric sound.

Before he lost interest in classical music, at the very beginning of his career, Yo-Yo Ma made this outstanding recording of Finzi's magnificent Cello Concerto. It's still the finest available, though it faces strong competition from Naxos, offering without question the most dramatic and exciting account on disc of the first movement. This matters hugely, because the piece can hang fire if there isn't sufficient contrast between its first two parts.

Focusing solely on American composers (New Yorkers, for that matter), Yo-yo Ma recorded an album with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra that reprises works from Stephen Albert, Bela Bartok, and Ernest Bloch. After being pampered by his cross-genre releases (Hush, Soul of the Tango, etc), some listeners might not actually care to hear a straightforward classical album, considering the skill with which Ma can play the cello and transform it into an instrument suitable for whatever style he's performing on a given date.

Sony Classical is excited to present the fantastic 1984 recording of Yo-Yo Ma, Seiji Ozawa, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a newly remastered re-release. This stellar line-up got together to record R. Strauss’ Don Quixote - indisputably the composer’s finest example of musical painting, his most daring in design and most controversial in effects - and Schoenberg’s fascinating arrangement of Monn’s Harpsichord Concerto for Cello and Orchestra.

Performing on the Baroque cello (outfitted with gut strings and without an endpin, making it so that the performer has to clutch the instrument between his/her legs), Yo-Yo Ma delivers the warm, listener-friendly classical music that he has become known for. Supported by conductor Ton Koopman's period Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ma presents a wholly unusual interpretation of some of Bach's better known Baroque works, as well as some lesser known pieces by Italian composer Luigi Boccherini.

The follow-up album to the highly successful Appalachia Waltz collaboration, Appalachian Journey continues the combination of classical music with Appalachian, bluegrass, and American roots music in general. Yo-Yo Ma, alongside violinist Mark O'Connor and bass player Edgar Meyer, runs through a number of original compositions fusing the traditions, as well as a few old standards from the genre repertoire.