Last night we heard an Austrian tenor, Daniel Johannsen, accompanied by a British pianist, Graham Johnson, perform Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin. Johannsen's voice is sweet and accurate, his stage presence is modest, and he sings strongly but almost as if he isn't trying to. I am not particularly fond of Lieder in general, but Schubert's Lieder are something else.
Then, after the intermission, we heard the string quartet, Death and the Maiden, performed by the Aviv Quartet: Sergey Ostrovsky, Evgenia Epshtein (violins), Nomie Bialobroda (viola), and Alexandre Khramouchin (cello). Their playing was on the highest level, dramatic and entirely in harmony with one another. We were elevated by the performance.
During the intermission, I looked at the audience. I am seventy, and I didn't feel old compared to the other listeners. It was great to watch the people greet friends, gesture animatedly, and respond enthusiastically to the atmosphere of high art. These old people, including myself, are engaged in life, interested in getting out and hearing music, pleased to see one another.
Then, in keeping, perhaps, with the morbid theme of The Beautiful Miller Girl, whose admirer drowns himself in the end, and the title of Death and the Maiden, I started wondering where the audience for Lieder recitals and chamber music is going to come from when we all die off. How many of us will still be alive in ten years, coming together again to hear great music?
As my wife and I walked home from the concert, I didn't raise my depressing thoughts. Rather we talked about how wonderful it is that these four musicians have worked so long and so hard to become masters of their instruments, brilliant interpreters of music, and an ensemble that plays with such mutual understanding.
I also had thought, during the concert, how the music written after Schubert, which the Aviv Quartet also plays, radiates back onto Schubert. Ears that have heard Shostakovich cannot but hear Schubert in a new way. We recently watched a BBC program about the first performance of Beethoven's Eroica, based on the conceit that no one, not even the musicians, had ever heard the symphony before. But that's not how we hear classical music now.
Then, after the intermission, we heard the string quartet, Death and the Maiden, performed by the Aviv Quartet: Sergey Ostrovsky, Evgenia Epshtein (violins), Nomie Bialobroda (viola), and Alexandre Khramouchin (cello). Their playing was on the highest level, dramatic and entirely in harmony with one another. We were elevated by the performance.
During the intermission, I looked at the audience. I am seventy, and I didn't feel old compared to the other listeners. It was great to watch the people greet friends, gesture animatedly, and respond enthusiastically to the atmosphere of high art. These old people, including myself, are engaged in life, interested in getting out and hearing music, pleased to see one another.
Then, in keeping, perhaps, with the morbid theme of The Beautiful Miller Girl, whose admirer drowns himself in the end, and the title of Death and the Maiden, I started wondering where the audience for Lieder recitals and chamber music is going to come from when we all die off. How many of us will still be alive in ten years, coming together again to hear great music?
As my wife and I walked home from the concert, I didn't raise my depressing thoughts. Rather we talked about how wonderful it is that these four musicians have worked so long and so hard to become masters of their instruments, brilliant interpreters of music, and an ensemble that plays with such mutual understanding.
I also had thought, during the concert, how the music written after Schubert, which the Aviv Quartet also plays, radiates back onto Schubert. Ears that have heard Shostakovich cannot but hear Schubert in a new way. We recently watched a BBC program about the first performance of Beethoven's Eroica, based on the conceit that no one, not even the musicians, had ever heard the symphony before. But that's not how we hear classical music now.
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