3 of 5 ... Sibelius 2nd Symphony. This piece was a vital touchstone for me when I was young. I returned to it over and over again. It expresses a pantheistic, nature-loving outlook that I found very supportive and formative during the tumult of youth. And of course, the ravishing melodies and arrangements ... I recall one particular performance ... I was attending the Aberdeen International Youth Festival when I was 16 to sing in the festival chorus in a performance of Verdis Requiem. As might be expected, the whole occasion was soaked in cheap cider and black currant cordial and there were a few sore heads at the lunchtime performance of this symphony one day given by NYoS (National Youth Orchestra of Scotland) under the baton of Sir Alexander Gibson. The performance of the first few items in the programme might best be characterised as routine and by the time they got to the Sibelius, the last item on the programme, it was clear some hangovers were beginning to kick in. Then disaster struck. The very exposed oboe entry in the 3rd movement - which lots of players were relying on for cues, it turned out - was utterly fluffed with an reed-splitting squeak. The whole edifice teetered precariously on the brink of utter collapse. Sir Alexander Gibson suddenly started conducting with the most vigorous, expansive gestures, trying to gain the full attention of the orchestra and rally it with a sense of urgency and desparation. He managed to hold it together. Just. They made it through that excruciating moment by the skin of their teeth. And from that point on it was clear to me every individual member of the orchestra had received a massive dose of adrenalin as a result of the trauma. And they played from that point on with such clarity and concentration, such precision, such a degree of attention to and passionate investment in the music, that I dont hesitate to declare it was the single best performance of any piece of music I have ever heard in my entire life. An audience response based on the performance up to that point would have been a polite ripple of applause before dispersing from what until then had been an entirely unmemorable event. The shock to the system of that fluffed oboe entry transformed the performance and I have never witnessed an audience more ecstatic and rapturous in its applause as encore after encore was demanded. We refused to sit down and we refused to walk away. We stood in awe, wondering how long this new kind of time and experience we were sharing could last ... The interval of time during which this took place had been removed from the normal run of things. Strangers looked in shock at each other in the unexpected fellowship of having witnessed a miracle. Never have half-asleep, hungover people been more vividly awake or more keenly aware of an experience they had in common. I base my entire personal theory of aesthetics - that the purpose of art, in whatever form, is to transform the period of time during which it is experienced and make it impossible to categorise it in terms of normal time or experience, to demand a special understanding that is not liable to the normal frailties and does not fade - on my experience of this piece of music during that concert. We were so completely transported. Of course, it was not recorded, so instead, here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic ... but of course, I cannot listen to any performance of this piece without remembering that incredible day.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 17:08:24 +0000
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