A Vancouver Recital Society presentation. At the Orpheum on Sunday, March 16

There are a number of strategies that can come into play when reviewing perfection in the arts. One would be to find some minor inconsistency and harp on it, in order to establish a sense of critical acumen or insider knowledge. Dealing with music in particular, it’s always safe to simply recapitulate the set list. And it’s also possible to talk about the personalities of those involved—in this case the preeminent cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the equally capable pianist Kathryn Stott—rather than the art in question.

Personally, I’m tempted to say, “This was a wonderful concert” and leave it there. But that’s not going to fly, so I’m going to pursue all three options listed above. Bear with me.

I did find it interesting that, before the concert, I was discussing Yo-Yo Ma with a cellist friend who questioned Ma’s occasionally overexuberant vibrato. He expressed a preference for the late János Starker, whose approach was indeed exceptionally stark, without the self-consciously emotive gestures of many other star cellists.

Fair enough. And I suppose my friend’s comment was still ringing in my ears during Ma’s performance of Olivier Messiaen’s “Louange à l’éternité de Jésus”, excerpted from the French composer’s epochal Quatuor pour la fin du temps. It’s arguable that the work’s considerable emotional power would have been slightly amplified—very slightly amplified—had Ma used less vibrato, as he did during the work’s long, slow, and extremely moving fade into silence.

It’s a fine point, though, and not one I want to press, especially as Ma’s expressiveness was exactly what made the suite of Manuel de Falla songs that closed the first part of the program sound so sublime. In an earlier interview with the Straight, Ma revealed that although he aspires to technical perfection, he’s more concerned with his instrument having a voice. And he certainly sang during de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, originally written for soprano with piano accompaniment. The more Moorish-sounding passages were especially strong; playing with Iranian kamancheh master Kayhan Kalhor in the Silk Road Ensemble appears to have given Ma extra insight into the microtonal inflections that animate flamenco and flamenco-inspired music.

Also striking was the introductory Suite Italienne, originally a showcase for another legendary cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky. Stravinsky’s homage to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi is occasionally dismissed as a reactionary affair, but what stood out from Ma and Stott’s inspired reading was the ease with which the Russian composer inserted modernistic or even avant-garde gestures into the vocabulary of the Italian Renaissance. In their hands, this 1932 work came across as a precursor to postmodernism rather than an aesthetic throwback.

The Stravinsky piece also highlighted the intimate rapport between cellist and pianist. Ma is definitely the star here, but Stott’s no-nonsense presence perfectly balances his more theatrical tendencies. Her approach to the piano blends unpretentious muscularity with deep analysis, a combination that turned the concluding Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, by César Franck, into a tour-de-force thrill-ride through many tricky rhythmic shifts.

Encores from Edward Elgar and Cesar Camargo Mariano followed, allowing for a happy decompression from the dizzying heights of the Franck.

Did I mention that this was a wonderful concert?