I fully believe that they purposely did not
advertise the musical piece Modulations by
Grisey. If I had known that piece
of… oh well, was on the program, I would not have wasted a Friday evening with
the San Francisco Symphony. My ears can only take so much – seriously; unorganized
noise at its worst, what I’m concerned.
When my wife told me that Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki was coming to San
Francisco to lead the city’s very well playing symphony orchestra through works
by Prokofiev and Sibelius, we decided to get tickets. I hinted
that for her taste, Prokofiev was probably a bit off balance compared to
traditional and more romantic classical music. Prokofiev was experimenting a
bit in the early 1900, and though I like some of his work, for the casual
listener of classical music, it can at times be a bit hectic and somewhat confusing.
We decided to go because of Sibelius. I’m from
Denmark, my wife is from Sweden, so Finland is in that corner of the world from
where we came. Though Finlandia is
one of the more popular works by Sibelius, they were going to play his Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Opus 39 (down
the hall to the left…), one of his more ‘trying’ pieces, though very beautiful
in places. But they did not warn us
about Grisey – so shame on them.
But first dinner at Max’s at the Opera a few blocks from the Davies Symphony Hall in
lovely San Francisco. While waiting to be seated, we chatted with an energetic
woman who was nursing a huge Martini while letting go of a lot of information: “Max’s
is a good place to eat; there’s a jazz ensemble playing in the Symphony Hall after
the program is over, should be a great concert, where are you from?” etc. Her cute
husband was smiling quietly, nodding approvingly to everything she said – what
a guy. And off we went…
After dinner we found our seats in the concert hall and
looked at the program. That was the first time I saw that Grisey was on the menu – I knew this was not good, especially
because my wife would most certainly not be able to sit through the noise of
disorganized, loud and painful sounds and extreme clatters – and that’s being
nice.
What it really sounds like is, if you can imagine the following: Drag all
the orchestra’s instruments to the very top of the Pyramid of Khafre (that
would be in Egypt, if they haven’t moved it). Line up the whole shebang in no
certain order. On ‘3’, push hard and the sound you hear are the noises of the
instruments rambling to the ground, in a so-called avante garde kind of musical
way – and again, that’s being extremely nice. We sat through that insane racket
for 20 minutes, which felt like 20 days (and nights); not my cup of tea.
During this ‘challenge’ of disorganized sounds, I
tried to hide by morphing myself into the chair. But my biggest concern was
that I was sure my wife was stunned stiff, to say the least – and that she was.
Looking around I felt most of the nearby audience was dumbfounded as well.
A beautiful young couple was sitting next to us a few
seats over. The four of us kind of had the last row to ourselves, spreading out
– though still way too close to the sounds in front of us.
We had nodded ‘hi’s as we arrived, big smiles, expecting
a grand evening of great music – but then bloody Grisey showed up…When the band were about 5 minutes into Modulations
(Siamese cats being steamrolled by noisy machinery – or something like that), I
stealthily glanced in the direction of the couple. She caught me looking; her
eyes were rolling as she painfully tried to smile, and then she asked: “what
the heck is going on? – Have they started yet or are they still warming up?” Like
I would know; but I could only agree.
Then I turned to my suffering wife to let her know
that we were not the only ones in distress. A few moments later I looked to my
left again – but they had escaped. That’s what I wanted to do as well, but for
some perverted masochistic reason we stayed, though with covered ears till the
noise stopped. The experience was very similar to the only reason you would bang
your head against a wall, because it feels so good when you stop? Well, this
had been the ultimate wall-banging.
After the last piece of noise had died down, I was surprised
that several people in the audience applauded, but it did sound like clapping
with hesitance – as well as it should have been. Perhaps they were
appreciative that the noise had finally stopped?
But don’t get me wrong, I am so much for ‘each to
his/her own’, meaning we have different tastes concerning different things – of
course we do. I like something that you don’t like (but of course you really
should like it too, duh) and you like something I feel you shouldn’t like. But
through it all, I do seriously respect your tastes and opinions, with Grisey’s work as an outright exception
of course.
But here it comes: I am a very straight-forward kind
of person, which explains my lack of friends, as I will always tell you how I
feel, if you ask or not. I thought it was an utter waste of time, money and
space (?) and I looked around to find people (admitting) the same. But you know
what, several people were clapping and some got out of their seats for that ‘standing
(bloody) ovation’ thing. Were they crazy or just part of Grisey’s immediate family? I mean really…
So this is where I pull out Hans Christian
Andersen’s THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES,
where the scam-tailors tell everybody that if they cannot see the (invisible) beautiful gold-threaded fabric on the loom, they are stupid – and nobody wants to be or look
stupid (if they don’t have to). Therefor many applauded Grisey and the
orchestra – big time. So of course I wonder: ‘What the heck did I miss – if anything’; of course I quickly came to the conclusion that I was right that it sucked, but fortunately not a tune that would get stuck in my head, at all – how lucky was
that...
At half-time (intermission,
as it is called in symphony halls), my wife was getting some wine. The barkeep
had the nerve to ask if she enjoyed the concert so far. My wife, probably
being even more straight-forward and honest than I (but has a lot more friends
– go figure), said: ‘That was pretty much the worst 20 minutes of my life’ – he
giggled and I agreed.
We must have room and place for all kinds of
expressions with respect to art and culture and whatever it brings along – as
long as it is legal, of course; I have never had a problem with that. We must
keep expanding our knowledge and horizon to more so understand where we are,
what we do and where we, as a society are heading.
The beautiful thing about this is that we do not have to like everything, as we have so
many options and choices. In spite of experiencing all those instruments and
gadgets taking 20 slow-motion minutes of my life to fall off the Pyramid of
Khafre, it did get a reaction out of me, and no matter if positive or negative,
it was a reaction – and isn’t that enough, isn’t that also one of the goals?
(In this case, it was much more than enough – really; my wife can testify to
that).
The happy ending was that the evening was rounded up with a
beautiful piece by Sibelius. If I’m
not totally wrong ALL the musicians in the orchestra looked very relieved and the
audience looked utterly happy. And wouldn’t you know, the beautiful couple came
back – and finally my wife smiled; I like it a lot when she does that smiling
bit, I really do – happy endings are my favorite.
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