Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Th I started learning the cello. I was around six or seven when my father came home with a videotape of Yo-Yo Ma playing the piece with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov. It was the first eme has been with me almost since time I’d ever watched a performance like that – it was a special gala concert for the 150th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s birth, with Itzhak Perlman and Jessye Norman also in attendance – but I’d never seen anything like Ma’s playing before. Even though I was so young, I could sense his freedom of expression, creativity and the way he responded to Temirkanov; it was shocking and impressive in equal measure and I knew then that playing the cello in this expressive way was how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.