THE DAILY news is full of statistics of the dead and the dying. But, still, I turn to live classical music.
So many things these days do not favor going to a concert. One, just going to the concert venue is sheer torture because of the traffic. Two, at your age, you are prone to many things: vertigo, high blood, ennui, low self-worth, angst and the like. Three, on your way to the concert venue, you might just accidentally end up another statistic in the government’s war against crime and drugs.
But why insist on going to a concert?
These days, I go for strictly personal reasons.
One, it is my chance to hear my favorite music live. Two, I want to feel how the music will affect me now in my older years. Music has a different message when it hits you in your youth. In your mature age, you just might be surprised that the same music has a different story to tell. Three, concerts allow me to review my past life with music in the background. Sometimes, a Chopin concerto becomes the vehicle for remembering my youthful years, the daring years, the lonely years.
When I walked the late filmmaker Marilou Diaz Abaya to the CCP parking lot after Rach 2, I asked her, “Why are crying?” She replied, “With Cecile’s interpretation, I saw my life just walk by.”
A few months later, she was diagnosed with cancer and, seven years later, she passed away.
Seeing young conductor Darrell Ang lead the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) for the first time in an all-Mozart program with a pianist and a tenor three years ago, you realize some conductors are more gifted than others.
I do believe that missing Maestro Ang’s concert on Aug. 13 next month is missing a great opportunity to know great music at close range.
As pianist Mitsuko Uchida once affirmed: “Music gives you a totally different way of concentrating, and to have a pocket of time where you can forget about the reality of life. It speaks to you differently at different times. That is the beauty.”
Maestro Darrell Ang leads the MSO on Aug. 13, 8 p.m., with a German-Chinese cellist Isang Enders as soloist in a Shostakovich cello concerto. He wraps up the concert with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major Op. 92, at Power Mac Center Spotlight in Circuit Makati. Call TicketWorld at 8919999.
