Monday night, I witnessed music that did what it ought to do: it moved my heart. The highlight of Monday evening's performance was the Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 77, performed by the impeccable Midori as soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Bramwell Tovey.
It was not the first time that I'd heard this piece performed live. In fact, earlier this year, in Montreal, I heard it performed by Maxim Vengerov with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. However, my friend and I arrived literally one minute too late and were not able to be seated in time for the first half. Nonetheless, we watched disappointed from the cushy, gorgeous, comfortable lobby at Place des Arts on their video screens. My heart was aching because I knew that I was missing a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Moving on from that tragic experience, involving the wrong bus on Avenue du Parc, I bravely continued with my concert-going life. As fortune would have it, 2013 granted me another opportunity to hear this formidable concerto live. Monday night, after an extremely hectic day of teaching school, teaching piano, and tutoring, (with 10 minutes to spare for something that resembled food), I headed downtown to the Orpheum Theatre.
My friend who accompanied asked: "So, what makes this Brahms Concerto so special?" I smiled and replied: "Oh, it has many technical challenges. The melodies are quite nice though." My answer should have been about how Brahms' music touches the core of the human soul and what it means to love, lose, try again, and experience joy and pain during life's journey. After Midori's sensitive, humble, and touching interpretation, my answer would have been that this amazing work of music allows us to experience all of those sentiments on such a heightened level.
What allowed Midori to play Brahms' music so that I felt each emotion that the composer intends for me to experience? In a word, her maturity. Midori is in her early forties. She has been concertizing since the age of eleven. What I witnessed on stage was her taking a secondary role to the music. Her stage presence and choice of dynamics allowed us to appreciate the notes that Brahms has left us. We rarely noticed Midori, but we sure paid attention to Johannes! That is what a true musician is supposed to do when they interpret a composer's work of art for us. They are, in fact, simply the vehicle by which that composer's art is delivered to us. From this concert experience, I will always remember how Midori made herself literally and figuratively small. She is a diminutive woman in stature but she made herself small in relation to her ego. There was no encore. We did not need one. She had given of herself and was an incredible partner with the orchestra. There were moments when I had wished to hear more of her violin and I had wanted her to "play out" more. Then, after a few minutes, my ears adjusted and I simply listened more carefully. Her modesty was simply exemplary. In fact, my dear friend, who is an accomplished pianist, made the comment: "A showy person really couldn't play this concerto."
There were a few points during the first movement where I could actually feel my heart hurt. Since Midori so faithfully presented the music to us, her willing audience, we were able to experience loss, yearning, frustration, love, peace, and triumph - all of the sentiments that Brahms includes in this masterpiece. I have no qualm with the fact that many feelings of loss or melancholy stayed in my heart after the concert. That, after all, is what good music ought to do. It ought to affect you profoundly and emotionally. If the musicians are successful, and the composer has written something to which you can relate, a wonderful performance will touch deep scars, open old wounds, and make no promise to patch them back up again.
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