Last night
I attended a concert. Nothing noteworthy
about that; indeed, it would be more unusual for me to write that I had NOT
attended a concert.
The
difference was that I attended this concert not for professional reasons, nor
yet because of a sense of duty. None of the performers was familiar to me as a
friend, student, colleague or musician, and there was nothing in the programme
which particularly enticed me. I did not
go because somebody had asked me or because I was going to be in someone else’s
company, and, in truth, being an amateur, student concert, it was the sort of
thing I might usually have avoided, especially as it came at the end of a long
work day and I was quite keen to go home.
The fact was, though, that having spent my day up to my eyes in music
and music-making of considerable professional intensity, I just thought it
would be the best way to unwind. At home
I have no television, which would be my customary method of relaxing after a
hard day, and my useless internet provider (a company called MyRepublic which I
urge all Singaporeans to avoid like the plague) does not offer me sufficient
bandwidth (despite their claims to the contrary) to listen to radio online
(forget any notion of watching any video content). A concert of uninspiring trifles played by
amateurs seemed the nearest thing I could think of for mindless entertainment. There was a chance I could just sit down and
let the sounds wash harmlessly over me.
Performances
were notable for the dedication the student players had put into them, and if
the end results ranged from the amusingly bad to the earnestly careful, that
was not to belittle the obvious sense of achievement each player showed as they
left the stage. The amateurishness of
the event was heightened not only by a programme booklet, which was so full of
basic errors as to be a source of great mirth, and a Master (or rather
Mistress) of Ceremonies who performed an utterly pointless role. Why is it that amateur concert promoters in
south-east Asia feel the need to call on the services of an MC? Invariably the MC knows nothing about the
event, reads a script with no understanding of the words it contains nor any ability
to pronounce them, wholly misunderstands the purpose of the function and
generally obstructs the proceedings to the extent that it seems to run on
interminably. Last night’s MC seemed
there purely to show off a pretty spectacular blue dress, but with crass
phrases like “Let us put our hands together for the players” (replace an L with
and R in that sentence, and you have what was always told to us children in
church) she had obviously read the Bluffers Guide to Saying Stupid Things In
Public. Fortunately the packed audience
of students and friends were far more clued-up than the presence of an MC
implied, and they ignored most of her entreaties and listened to the music with
rapt attention, supporting the performances with genuine applause.
It impressed
me how much hard work had obviously gone into preparing the performances, and
the clear level of concentration every one of the student performers showed and
their obvious satisfaction in having achieved their objective of performing on
stage to the best of their ability more than amply compensated for the many and
obvious musical shortcomings in the performances. Amateur music making is not about high-level
technical delivery or intuitive interpretations, but about effort,
determination and commitment, and these all succeeded magnificently, even if I
did have a good (private) laugh at some of the more blatant errors. It all served to make me profoundly glad that
I had gone and to regret the fact that I had approached it in a slightly negative
frame of mind.
The highlight
of the evening was when a group of eight string players did the first movement
of Mendelssohn’s Octet. It got a deservedly
warm round of applause and some genuine cheers
from the audience who, it has to be said, behaved impeccably throughout
(as opposed to the ushers who decided that walking around and loudly telling
people off for taking photographs during the performance was more important
than allowing the rest of us to enjoy the music). There was a wonderful look of triumph on the
faces of the players when they reached the final cadence – as well there should
have been. They did really well.
The thing
is, no performance of the Mendelssohn Octet can ever leave me unwound or
relaxed. It stirs something deep inside
me which churns my stomach and makes me restless. On the bus going home after the concert I
fidgeted and hummed to myself, much to the irritation of the young lady seated
beside me who appeared to be attempting to text the entire contents of the Old
Testament in the space of a 20-minute bus ride.
And despite a hefty whisky (or two) back home, any hope of relaxing had
gone. I spent a restless night going
over the Mendelssohn time and time again in my head.
I would
never suggest it was one of my favourite pieces, yet I love it in a very deep
and intimate way. And I suppose that
love comes from the fact that it is one of a handful of pieces which has, in
the past, unlocked internal musical doors for me. Mendelssohn’s music was among the first I got
to know. As a piano student I played
many of his simple piano pieces and his Songs
Without Words, while as a young organist I had his Sixth Organ Sonata firmly
embedded in my repertory (not to mention the Wedding March and the War March
of the Priests ). Yet somehow Mendelssohn was just another composer,
pleasant and harmless, occasionally predictable and worthy, but never
inspiring, and when I first performed Elijah
as a tenor in the university choir, I enjoyed the experience but never
really felt affinity with the musical idiom.
But that
changed dramatically one Saturday morning when, listening to the Record Review on BBC Radio 3, I heard
the reviewer recommend the Nash Ensemble recording of the Mendelssohn
Octet. So persuasive was the reviewer
(surely it wasn’t Lionel Salter, but I hear his voice in my inner ear uttering the
words) that I went out and bought that record.
On one hearing I was transfixed.
This was the key to understanding Mendelssohn for me. I listened to it over and over again, and
from that moment onwards in every piece of Mendelssohn I came across, I saw a
new and inspiring light. Every composer
has his distinct voice, and sometimes you need a work to act as the trigger to
unlock your access to that voice. For
me, it was the Octet which opened my ears to Mendelssohn.
It has happened
with a few other composers. Hindemith
came alive for me only after hearing the Mathis
der Maler Symphony, and for Franck it was the Violin Sonata which opened my
ears to what he genuinely had to say.
Other composers – Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Rachmaninov, Messiaen – I locked
on to straight away, while for others – Chopin. Liszt, Verdi – I have yet to
find that key; and there’s a lot of fun in looking for it.
But the
message I take away from this is that, for each individual listener, true
access to a composer is often to be found only in one work which, for some
inexplicable reason, triggers a reaction deep in their psyche. We should never say we “don’t like” a
composer’s music; instead we should suggest that we have yet to find the work
which unlocks that composer for us. We
can’t really dismiss a composer’s music until we have heard everything he has
to say.
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