Orchestra hall is hushed awaiting the entrance of the soloist
The anticipation in the air is palpable
It has been so covid-long
Since I sat in this hallowed sanctuary
Having brought my grandchildren here last
For the Italian concerto
I have returned
Albeit be-masked like the other worshippers
Bathed in the yellow warm light of this circular temple
Facing the majestic organ pipes at attention like soldiers.
Suddenly the door opens, and in she floats,
A low-cut gown, midnight blue, straight then flaring at the bottom
She glides across the stage like a mermaid
Slowly she removes her black mask
And places it (with disdain?) on the concert master Chen’s music stand (!)
I cannot describe her performance better than Johnson (below)
But found myself weeping in the Larghetto
Solti’s orchestra revealing the greatest string section in the world
The lush svelte sound so unique to Chicago
Was the perfect partner to the mastery of her 40-year-old career.
When music moves me it is like love-making,
At the center of the experience is this Rilke-like sense of the tragic
That death is the pure counterpoint to this sublime
That these few moments of exalted spiritual experience
In life, merely reflect its ironic and tragic at its core.
These precious moments lie in stark contrast
To both the mundane, the routine, the dulling of the senses of the ordinary
How we have anesthetized ourselves from the horrors of the outside world.
Later I am overwhelmed by a sense of impropriety..
(beyond the fact that only here-
among the intellectuals and music lovers of Chicago
Sitting between their dress ties and gowns
in the box section- am I acutely aware of my difference
My yarmulke screaming out
my embarrassed ethnicity to one and all)
No, what overcomes me are the memories of Ukraine,
the military hospital, the blast injuries,
the impending doom that awaits.
Here I am sitting in this rarefied temple of kultur and refinement
Listening to what arguably might be
the greatest performer and orchestra of this concerto alive,
In this perfection of sound and acoustics,
Among the gentile class of music lovers I share with,
While that horror is going on a plane ride away.
And my thoughts go back to Warsaw Ghetto and Mariupol
And a possibly similar scene during the war
when the Berlin Philharmonic played
And good upper class educated sophisticated German citizens
listened enrapt by the wizardry of Furtwengler,
In their evening gowns and tuxedos
While the crematoria burned.
In what moral universe does music and art get an ethical pass
No wonder after Auschwitz
the modern enlightenment project gets called into question
No wonder we have learned to split and detach
as if geography prevented leakage of the horrors
Into our hermetically sealed music halls and psyches.
Tonight I am complicit.
