The only ugly thing about attending a classical music performance is that the audience doesn't stop being human. As I listen to the cello--masterfully caressed by Antonio Meneses--alternately moan and wail Copland's Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme, the audience coughs and sniffles, great wads of phlegm drawn back into their ancient nasal passages. I want to poke their eyes out with a hat pin. This music is supposed to be elevating! Perhaps the aged audience is made uncomfortable by Copland's modern, discordant, unharmonious, nerve-grating, syncopated perfection. In its superficial confusion of tone and content this piece is unconsciously appropriate. It has a Chagall-ish grotesquerie about it that puts today's social tensions into a gilded frame where conflicts and unrest can come to life and interact under the guidance of a greater force. The Vitebsk makes me hopeful. And then a hopeful silence is broken by the first chords of Beethoven's Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 1 No.1. I say to myself, "This is the drama I've been waiting for, the aural story that makes my eyes water." I love Beethoven because his music is so subtly angry that movements like the Adagio Cantabile feel ironic in the suspense of their gentle singing cadences. Now I think, "A Clockwork Orange's battery is dead, time for beauty again." Begone ye Philly aesthetic and be ye replaced by this--by Beethoven. I wonder if the man who turns pages for the pianist Menahem Pressler gets paid. Whatever. And now Brahms (Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8), whom I've always associated with lullabyes, surprises me by being excitingly full of mood: withdrawing yet unrelenting, delicate but stable. By the third movement, heads have dropped to chests around me andÿthe audienceÿswells in gentle waves of synchronized snores. AndÿI realize they're asleep because Brahms has no rage in his machine. But they awaken for the vibrant, vibrating, vital encore: Shostakovich. This was a fantastic break from my rock 'n' roll existence, as it should be from yours.
For info on The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society's other concerts visit http://www.pcmsnet.org Tonight's concert (10/18) is Ewa Podles, the much acclaimed contralto. $10 for students at the Pennsylvania Convention Center Auditorium.
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