jeudi 19 septembre 2013

Bach and the well-tempered decision

Last week I attended a very nice concert at the Philharmoniker. It was the first time I was able to enter this mythical place, and I wasn't disappointed. The lunch concerts are free events where young musicians meet their audience in the Philharmonie Foyer. There must have been two hundred, maybe three hundred people sitting on the floor, the stairs, and around the stage in the middle of the hall. In fact the setting is in no way as formal as a typical concert, where when you're not a musician or not used to that world, you might feel a little ill at ease with the whole thing. I know a lot of people put off by the amount of snobs attending those events (including me. That is, for the put off part), whereas enjoying classical music doesn't have to imply wearing a black-tie or an expensive evening dress. Especially at lunch time.
Back to the topic, this concert was very special to me, because the three musicians played the Goldberg Variations - arranged for strings - and any piece of Bach as a special resonance to me: a dear friend used to tell me that once you played Bach, you could play anything at the piano. It turned out he was right - he could play anything. At the time, I would leave him to it and turn my hands on Debussy instead, before stopping playing altogether. Twelve years later, I went to that concert. I thought about my friend a lot, and I just bought myself a piano.





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