A Long And Winding Road

I'm surprised this disk, Silk Road Journeys - When strangers Meet by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, didn't make more of a splash, at least here in the UK. Some world music purists sniffily dismissed it as a classical muso not having the freedom to relate to ehtnic music and in some classical circles it was thought of as being simply a crossover venture. Both views are nonsense, it is a deeply serious project with mutual respect on both sides and outstanding musicianship. The Chinese, Iranian and Indian players are all steeped in long classical traditions anyway; not that there is anything wrong with more folksy approaches but they aren't in evidence here. The concept is a musical journey along the ancient silk road route from Beijing to Venice ( with an odd and lengthy detour to play a couple of Finnish Folksongs on piano and cello ) Yo-Yo Ma features heavily as a performer on some tracks but on others he hardly plays at all, his role in the entire project being more that of a facilitator. This particular recording is biased towards Chinese and Persian flavoured works, with the aforementioned Finnish detour and an early baroque Italian piece but the whole Silk Road Ensemble project is one of collaboration by in this case 24 players from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the US, with other tradiions getting more of a look in live and on subsequent recordings.