Varieties of Musical Experience

I can’t help thinking we live in the richest cultural environment the world has ever known. And you don’t have to fly to New York or London to tap into it. Films are everywhere now, of course, presuming you have a DVD player close at hand. Bookstores seem to be on the wane (alas) but access to information about unusual books, and to the books themselves, is greater than ever before. It wasn’t so long ago that book dealers used a weekly used book search magazine, set in very fine lettering on newsprint, to locate those obscure or out-of-print titles for us. Now we can tap into a far wider stock of titles ourselves via the internet in seconds.

Museums? Theater? Live music performance? There aren’t enough days in the week to tap into it all.

I attended two musical events on opposite ends of the musical spectrum recently—maybe that’s what got me thinking about all this.

Last Saturday afternoon we wandered into the second floor gallery at United Methodist Church to hear the Artaria String Quartet perform four of Shostakovich’s string quartets. I’ve never been much of a fan of the man’s orchestral works, which strike me as muddled, bombastic and hermetic by turns, and lacking a core of deep emotion. But hey! The performance was free.


And these more personal works were somehow different. We listened as the Artaria, who’ve been together for twenty-five years, spun their exquisite web of sounds through the pages of the 6th, 8th, 9th, and 10th quartets, none of which I’d heard before. I was listening to a man think, hum, grumble, dance, sing, despair. The sixth was a bit breezy—Shostakovich was on his honeymoon when he wrote it. The eighth was rich and rock solid—I later learned that it’s performed more often than all of his other quartets combined.

Following a lengthy intermission, we returned to our seats to hear the ninth and tenth, which were only marginally less powerful and appealing than what had come before. The couples sitting next to us on either side left during intermission, so we could stretch out a bit on our folding chairs as we listened. Members of the quartet gave brief introductions to each piece, setting it in some sort of biographical context. But for the most part, it was simply the sound of the strings, the patterns of interaction, the rich and difficult harmonies, and the lyric thrust—nothing more. What more could we ask for? It was almost like drinking a glass of cool water after an all-day hike through the desert.

Though it was difficult to see the performers from where we sat, it was pleasant enough to look around at the Old Masters hanging on the walls—especially the huge painting of Jesus healing a young woman as two or three bearded men sit by in astonishment. The painting must be ten feet high at least, and my eyes roamed its surface repeatedly in the course of the two-hour concert.

How different the scene was yesterday at the Brookdale Regal 20-screen cinema, where we attended a live HD broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s new work, Enchanted Island! The lengthy two-act romance/comedy has been patched together from the works of several Baroque composers, with Handel, Rameau, and Vivaldi prominent among them. The story draws on elements of both The Tempest and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, though it takes on a life of its own from the get-go. There are love potions, mistaken identities, usurped powers, retribution, freedom, and forgiveness. No need to go into details. It was all amusing, sometimes moving, and the lyrical and heavily ornamented vocal lines are the stuff that sends the heart soaring.

The costumes were remarkable, the sets looked like a succession of antique tarot cards, with raging cardboard seas, dark forests inhabited by Bosch-like animals, and creaking castles. One of the most impressive scenes recreates Neptune’s ocean-bottom throne room, with mermaids dangling from wires and Placido Domingo, complete with seaweed hair and an oyster-shell crown, at the center of it all, waving his trident.

The stellar cast also included the winsome Daniele de Niese, Joyce DeDonato, David Daniels, and Luca Pisaroni in the role of Caliban, a Lurch-like figure who cannot seem to get a date. There is a lengthy ballet number in the middle of act two, and also a plug for environmental awareness!?

I listened to the rousing final chorus, after four hours of merriment, with a huge grin on my face, not wanting it to end, and pondering whether it would be worthwhile to attend the repeat performance February 8. Maybe smuggle in a camera?