Plucking the Heartstrings
Specifically, the 'D' String.
Having been forced by circumstance to feed upon the classical music equivalent of the thinnest millet gruel, with a few tasty mealworms thrown in for good measure, whilst others feasted on the plumpest of pheasants and richest of soups, it was of course no surprise that I lunged at the opportunity to attend a 'live' concert like an emaciated beggar lunges for a dry crust of bread on the ground.
Just as there is something about the smell of freshly-baked bread and a good game of Free cell, live (classical) music has something about it that tingles the senses, heightens acuity and purifies the spirit, something that a recording, even a very good recording, cannot provide, something like being shown a card with a picture of a bowl of soup on it as opposed to actually eating that soup (namely, the deprivation of one or more senses that fires up the imagination).
Driven by hunger, and a lack of choice, we nevertheless settled upon a tantalising concert that offered the whole chronological smorgasbord of violin music (though the violin is not the most favourite of my solo instruments to listen to, it being a dual character rather like a shrill little girl at times and a sultry, enticing woman at others.) I was looking forward to enjoying a concert in the company of others who did not rashly applaud in between movements while balancing a sick child in the lap of another who thought that expressing his appreciation in the form of acute noises like those made by a paper shredder with a tin can (of lychees, I am thinking) jammed in it) while her handphone pumped out the Overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie (the perfect music to cook pasta to) in all its polyphonic glory (mitigating circumstances include a dead parent or a catastrophic stock market collapse, but other excuses are ridiculous otherwise).
That was what we mostly got really, a large but terribly ugly concert hall building with fully-stocked bars, knowledgeable and cultured, and most of all, appreciative and polite audience. Not a single rendition of Ein Kleine Nachtmusik was heard during the concert, for example. It was thoroughly impressive, losing out only to the virtuosic splendour of the violinist of course.
M--, more the screen name of some C class Japanese (ahem) film actress than the name of an accomplished musician proved that the first calling of anybody to commits a career to playing an instrument (inadvertently I typed this out before realising it as an awful double entendre, though a rather clever one, as above) is the music and not the style. Compared to the flash-in-the-pan "violinists" we have these days, spending a dedicated 20 years playing the violin professionally, practicing tirelessly, it may be said that these are the people who uphold the entire existence of the sphere of classical music that make it always pleasurable and welcoming (these are completely unintentional, I assure you).
Near the end, with great trains of running notes sending a warmth through my spine, I was once again brought back to the times when I used to attend many such concerts and relish every single one of them, applauding maniacally at the end in varying stages of euphoria (except for a select few poor performances, like how you sometimes find a mouldy orange lurking in a bag of fragrant, juicy ones). Unparalleled technical superiority and maturity, warm, lush expression, good repertoire and an all-round good spirit made it a memorable return to the realm of live classical music, reassuring us how, if Bach's music had survived the last 300 years, then surely it would survive another 300.
