If classical artists had any groupies, they would be old ladies who have gotten proficient at wielding those new fangled digital cameras or young ladies clamoring to get a cheek-to-cheek photograph with the virtuoso. While I was standing in line for the signing I noticed that most of the fans were women. I suppose it's not that surprising if you look at the pictures of the virtuoso in question. But I wonder if the composition of the crowd would be different if it had been Itzhak Perlman instead.
Signings, however, are funny things. Instead of being as psyched about the event as other people, my mind wanders. Maybe it's the effect of standing around waiting with nothing to do. It seems too commercial and manipulated and I really begin to think that I've succumbed to some herd mentality. Waiting has this insidious effect of planting paranoid ideas in your head--like how the middlemen probably deliberately engineered the selling of marked up CDs.
Originally, there was supposed to be a discussion with Joshua Bell an hour before the concert, but instead there was a lecture by a music professor on the background of the pieces that were going to be played. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the music lecture, but one wonders what really happened when the organizers have to apologize for the alternative scheduling due to a snafu with the violinist's agent.
The concert itself was a rather informal affair. While some musicians always wear the tux and bow tie on stage, Bell and his accompanist, the pianist Simon Mulligan were in black casual with Bell's shirt noticeably untucked. But perhaps this was also for practical purposes--casual clothing affords freedom of movement for more expressive passages. I found it amusing that a woman in the row behind me complained about bad seats but was sushed by her husband by replying that they had good seats. I should say so. Unless that woman was completely blind, she should have been close enough to the stage to see the horse hair snap from the bow, the graining on the 1713 "Gibson ex Huberman" Stradivarius violin, and the sweat gleaming from Bell's face.
The first piece was the Sonatina for Violin and Piano in G minor, D. 408 by Franz Schubert. It was written when Schubert was only 19 and highly influenced by Mozart. But it was hardly typical in one way. Although the title says G minor, most of the melody is in a major key. Resolutions of major motifs aren't typical either--Schubert likes to rush off into a totally different key when you're expecting something else. But to the modern ear accustomed to a lot of dissonant melodies, it's a very subtle thing.
The Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in C minor, Op. 45 by Edvard Grieg was actually my favorite piece in the program. Where the young Schubert is all teenaged rebelliousness with a short attention span, Grieg is contemplative and sentimental, moody even. The entire piece is intensely focused and the movement names bear it out: allegro molto ed appassionato, allegretto espressivo alla romanza, allegro animato.
Maurice Ravel, one of a clutch of famous French impressionistic composers, attempted to Frenchify the blues in his Sonata for Violin and Piano. There's a fantastic perpetuum mobile at the end where the violinist gets to showcase his stamina and technical skill, but the Blues section is most curious. There are blues motifs, but then it isn't blues. The best description I've heard of this section is that it's like Mexican food in the Upper Valley. All the ingredients are there, but it's not quite like the real thing. No wonder then, that when the sonata debuted in 1927 that many American critics took note of it.
The last two shorter pieces on the program and the encore are also rather romantic, dangerously bordering on the sappy. The Sérénade mélancolique by Tchaikovsky was originally written for violin and orchestra but later successfully transcribed for violin and piano. The Introduction and Tarantella (scroll down for the mp3) by Pablo de Sarasate, violinist and composer in the 1800s, is a bit more lively but still in the romantic tradition (a tarantella originated as an Italian erotic courtship dance). The encore was an airy melody by the German composer Gluck.
One could say, as I've heard many people in the audience say about the concert, "It was fantastic!" or "It was awesome!" but really, those accolades aren't really descriptive. Perhaps the best analogy was one that popped into my head while Joshua Bell was digging vigorously into Ravel's perpetuum mobile, his locks shaking in the light as he jerked his bow and his feet moving intricately as he shifted on stage. He's the classical equivalent of Luke Skywalker in black doing a showdown with Darth Vader. Except he's using the violin instead of the light saber.
