After This There Will Be So Many Good Ones

Five weeks into my stay here in Berlin this summer, it’s interesting to pause and reflect a bit over the metamorphosis of my concert-going experience. This centers around the city’s two premiere groups, namely, the Philharmoniker and the Staatsoper/Staatskapelle, since either band is capable of leaving me in a mental state that few other performance ensembles can induce. What is metamorphosizing, then, is my experience of that amazing-performance-induced mental state.

Initially, I noted it here (on the blog) as a sort of meta-enjoyment, or, that is, the acute experience of enjoying, additionally, the fact that I was enjoying myself so thoroughly. This noticing eventually then led to a doubting of my own credentials re: enjoyment (by which I do not mean should-I-have-read-/-be-reading-more-Lacan). And then just last weekend, with the Rattle Beethoven/Berlioz concert, I was concerned that I was/am becoming a sap.

Which brings us to this evening. The aforementioned (some post or two prior) Philharmoniker concert with the one-and-only Mariss Jansons conducting Shostakovich’s 6th Symphony, Berio’s Folk Songs (sung by Elina Garanča, who was incredible (and sang the last folk song a second time as an encore)), and Ravel’s La Valse. Both the Shostakovich and the Berio deserve posts of their own to discuss them (though I’m of the opinion that both Nate and Jack do a better job than me of actually writing about music), and maybe I’ll put some time into preparing such things (I especially plan to have a private e-mail correspondence with Nate about the Shostakovich, which can perhaps eventually be reformulated into a blog post). I also think that those two pieces worked really well together on the same program, and, though La Valse is always-already a throwaway, it can at least be tie-that-binded by the orchestrational brilliance of all three composers.

My day, leading up to the concert, was pretty mediocre. I was more tired than usual in class for no particular reason. In fact, in retrospect, I was even more tired than I thought I was at the time. Tired enough that coffee had no effect (this being the Orwellian coffee that the Goethe-Insitut sells it students for 25 euro-cents a cup (the coffee costs 50 cents per cup, with free refills, but its impossible to drink more than two cups of it (I’m not a snob – all students agree that the stuff is swill (many students, at this point, actually leave the premises of the Institute to go find better coffee (for more money (I, especially going to as many concerts as I’ve been going to, don’t have the cash to spend Berlin-standard money on daily coffee purchases (and I hope that my well-above-average commitment to Free Trade/Organic coffee Stateside isn’t totally undermined by these two months of as-cheap-as-possible-in-all-possible-ways coffee)))))) and I knew better than to finally break down and drink a third free-refill of it, knowing that then I would just be still tired but Berenstain-bearing it (one with a German-English dictionary, one with a broetchen, and one with the shivers)).

Tired enough that I took a nap almost directly after class (after the usual post-class internet-usage time). Though, unfortunately, during this nap I had the kind of restless dreams from which one awakes fearing that he has transformed into a giant cockroach-like beast. Luckily for you, though, with Lay of the Land still fresh in my head, I will repeat Frank Bascombe’s line – which, I believe, he states in all three books – “Relate a dream, lose a reader.” (And, of course, in similar fashion, I’ll go ahead and state that the dream was actually a late-for-the-concert anxiety dream, wherein I was trying to get to the Philharmonie, and did, but couldn’t manage to stay and had to keep running around trying to actually hear the concert.)

So I felt pretty crappy after my nap. Felt okay by the time I had walked to the Philharmonie to wait in line for Restkarten, but still, no better than mediocre. But the concert itself – completely rejuvenating. I ended up (I was again with my friend Maggie) with a student ticket in the second row of the orchestra level seats, pretty much dead center. Well “better” than any other seat I’ve ever had for a Philharmoniker concert. Again, the purpose of this post is not to talk about the music itself, but it was just yet another completely good performance. And sitting that close adds the additionally benefit of being able to see the musicians faces – to be able to see not just their movements but their facial expressions, especially so when you can actually see on their faces how much they are enjoying themselves.

Also, from so close, the string sound is just phenomenal. There are some textures in the first movement of the Shostakovich that are very eerie, for muted strings and such. The muted string sound was just so… well, unheimlich (uncanny)… that it almost sounded like a parody of what eeriness should sound like. The 6th Symphony was the front half of the concert, and during the intermission I had already totally forgotten what a lousy day I had had. So not only am I meta-enjoying uncritical sap, but I can be rejuvenated by this music too.

Also, Mariss Jansons is a rockstar. It’s really kind of incredible. After the end of the concert (La Valse) the audience applauded enough that, even after the band has left the stage, Jansons had to come back out one last time – this is after, already, several several rounds of applause. He’s already holding it down with the Concertgebouw and Bavarian Radio, but I’m quite curious to see what the future holds for him (and, incidentally (and maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but) his bio only has room for half a sentence about the fact that he was the director of the Pittsburgh Symphony for –what, five years?- before getting his current gigs (it’s hard to claim, though, that Pittsburgh took him for granted though, since the band there always sounded so much better with him than with anyone else (except for the rare other appearances of A-list conductors)))).

So, yeah, hopefully I’ll follow up on some point with more specific musings re: the music itself, but there’s the travelogue concert-goers blog version for y’all (my German has improved to the point where I rarely have to use English in typical day-to-day situations, but I’ve decided to affect a Southern accent any time that I do have to use it from this point out (also, speaking in German with an exaggerated Southern (U.S.) accent is also lots of fun (I do love my affects))).