I heart music

(28 February 2010)

I had the incredible treat tonight of seeing the Russian National Orchestra play in the chapel at school with special guest pianist the breathtaking Yuja Wang. There’s something really incredible about hearing great music. It makes you escape into a place where you believe everything is possible. Your mind starts swimming with all the good in the world, and all the bad in the world, and that’s when you feel that tightness in your stomach and that stinging behind the eyes that mean tears are a-comin’. There’s a certain resonant chord, or swelling crescendo, or moving melody that for some reason I can’t explain, jump-starts a visceral reaction.

Even if it’s a tune you recognize, something you can reproduce down to the note in your head, the song still has a way of moving you. Even for me, when I found myself distracted during Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff because I KNEW I knew the song, and I have this crazy complex when I have to figure out how I first came to know it. it’s like when I see a movie or am watching a TV show and recognize an actor or actress. I automatically am like “oh, he/she is from ___!” I have a pretty consistent tendency of matching it up quickly and correctly (much to the disappointment of Mel, with whom I often bet on if I’m right or not, and can proudly say that in all the years I’ve only lost twice to her), and sometimes have a hard time getting that original exposure out of my mind. Sometimes, though, it helps enhance my experience. Like tonight, for example, when it finally clicked that the movement was from Center Stage, during Jonathan’s ballet. I could see the fourth positions of the core and the majestic waving of the arms of Eva Rodriguez in my head as I heard the passionate movement being played before me. When it was over, and the applause broke me out of my trance, and I caught my breath, I felt the tiny tears balancing on my lids, though they never dropped over the edge, and my heart beating fairly ferociously (<-oxy moron? But cool alliteration, so it’s staying) and I had to catch my breath.

I had the most fun watching the conductor in the second piece of the three-piece concert as he danced on his podium in a graceful frenzy. It made me giggle a couple times, it was so musical!