Whenever we look through a family album of old photographs, most of us ask "Who is this?" not "Who was this?" Photographs are always present tense, and so are all the elements of life the enrich us. This blog considers music, film, books and other communications that call out to me always in the present tense.
It's the performance, stupid!
Each of us has a preferred method for listening to music, whether it’s earbuds on a smartphone, or headphones at a desktop computer, or loudspeakers hooked up to an old-style component stereo system. For some, high fidelity is crucial. For others, convenience trumps fidelity.
But in the end, it’s the performance that counts.
I spend more time than I care to admit surfing YouTube, following the algorithmic hints down a rabbit hole into more and more and more. As I tumbled, I found this Hilary Hahn video, a performance so engrossing that I quickly forget that this was filmed by a fan in the front rows, using a phone, no doubt.
Hahn’s audacious first recording, as a 17-year-old, was a set of Bach solo violin works, music usually considered too deep, too probing for a teenager to understand fully. But Hahn earned instant credibility, and now as America’s most sought-after classical soloist, she tours the world, performing the big, technique-driven violin concertos with all of the top orchestras. Almost without fail, she rewards her adoring fans with a solo Bach encore.
This video was made at a 2012 concert in Sao Paulo, Brazil, after she performed the showy and extroverted Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1. Her connection to this material is so intimate and personal, it’s almost shocking that this was performed in public as an encore. Watching this feels voyeuristic, as if intruding in a private affair.
The long contemplative pause (and I mean long) of the fermata before the final section, seems so right … the rhythmic pulse so gentle but firm … the melodic line so vocal … you can’t beat this.
And who cares if it came from a phone?
