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| Alan Storey - 31 May 2024 |
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| Alan Storey June 2002 |
For the record I will state here that I never again want to listen to or to go to a performance of Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 or listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (exception the Winter Largo). Why? Read on.
This blog will be followed below by the original blog I wrote about the Microcosmos Quartet concert on 24 May.
I know a few teachers in this century who dislike what they do because they say their students are stupid and ignorant.
I come from a family of teachers, my mother, grandmother and my wife were teachers. I even taught at a Jesuit university in Mexico City.
The four of us would have agreed that it is the obligation of a good teacher to inspire students.
I have known an inspiring teacher since around 1990 who keeps teaching me. This is violinist extraordinaire Marc Destrubé.
In these last few years I have come to understand why he likes to organize house concerts like the one I went to last week and a repetition of that one yesterday Friday.
What I have learned from Destrubé is the mechanics of listening to music.
Yes you can listen to Beethoven being played at the Orpheum. If you are from the last century like me you would understand the concept of ignoring the sound of a Musak version a Beatles song in an elevator.
I would be the first person to tell you that the idea of making myself a nice mug of Earl Grey Tea, lighting a fireplace and then to sit down to listen to a Bártok quartet in my living room would be anathema.
This bring me to the two concerts where Destrubé’s Microcosmos quartet played Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1 (1909).
You are in a small room, last night it was in Alan Storey’s home, and you are sitting (me) on the first row facing Destrubé and his music stand.
Everything they do, every nuance of their playing I could hear. Because they are in a room they do not have to fill the room (like an Orpheum) with a projected loud sound. Bártok has some dissonance and some quiet lovely melodic sounds. But if you have listened to this concert twice within two weeks you can almost (as in almost!) predict what is coming.
Sitting in an intimate situation with a small audience the quartet somehow makes Bártok and his String Quartet something that I might want to listen to in my living room.
Why?
Because the music would not come from a recorded studio but from my memory of a concert I was present at with musicians I know.
So Destrubé and company keep teaching me stuff.
And at age 81 I think I can listen to those 6 Bártok quartets without tiring.
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| Marc Destrubé some years ago when I was having my Picasso Blue Period |
A preview explanation of the concert
I have to admit that if I were alone in my house (not quite, as I have two cats, Niño and Niña) I would not play a Béla Bartók CD (I don’t have one).
But Marc Destrubé and his Microcosmos Quartet know something that has been plainly evident to me too, as I have gone to two previous performances in the quartet’s house concerts of Bartók’s 6 string quartets and also 3 of Benjamin Britten’s.
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| 24 May 2024 |
What is evident is that music that might seem unlistenable in the comfort of your home has a pleasant immediacy when one is in the first row (my friend graphic designer Graham Walker and I always sit on the front row). By observing each musician, who often smiles in pleasure, I can almost feel that I am with them in their joy.
Last night’s concert, at The Amenities Room of Ocean and Lee’s residence, had outstanding acoustics. In particular, the sound (and the playing ) of Hannah Addario-Berry’s cello (a rich reddish brown) was literally music to my ears.
Of the other featured composer, (my Valencian grandmother would have told me, “En su casa lo conocen,” or they know him at home, American Ned Rorem, was another example of Marc Destrubé’s talent of being an educator. We were pleasantly educated by music that had all kinds of moments that were lyrical and not so. Who would have known that a composer would have been so inspired by an artist (Picasso) to write this piece of music?
I was so interested in this process that I found out that my Argentine hero, Ástor Piazzolla, also wrote a composition on the painter.
Please go to the link below of the Microcosmos Quartet as there are a few more concerts that will repeat this program in the next few days.
And as for me, while I am no artist, I can attest that recently I have been having my very own Picasso Blue Period.
And for anybody not willing to listen to Béla Bartók, while sipping some Hungarian red wine, I can only repeat what American composer Charles Ives once said when he noticed people making a quick exit from one of his concerts, “Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.” And that applies to all you women, and the gender fluids, too.
