Not Tom and Jerry

Had I been to a concerto before? I found out at the Berliner Philharmonie when a piano was raised in the front of the stage. A tail-coated man walked humbly to his stool. And I thought of Tom and Jerry. I thought of that triumphant mouse playing with the keys, winding Tom’s stool way up high, crashing the piano’s lid down on his paws, anything to put that poor cat off his performance. No, never before, this was certainly my first time.

At the Philharmonie the orchestra plays to some people behind it, as well as to the vast majority who sit before the stage, including me tonight, somewhere in the middle. Above some beige convex objects, presumably an acoustic aid, hang looking like overturned masts of sailing ships blowing in the wind. Between them threads course down, terminating in microphones though there might have been spiders. Below the creature plays. The bows of violins and cellos poke out frequently like tentacles, while suddenly at the back appears the beat of drums and trumpets. At the mouth the conductor waves his wand, seemingly holding the music in a highly delicate balance somewhere above the players. Sometimes one fears he might not drop it.

In films, plays or rock concerts the spectator’s eye is treated to changing images. But nothing too much apparently changes here throughout the beautiful playing, save the poking tentacles and the waving wand. But such an assortment of different players means the concerto is full of riches. They were young and old, man and woman, and they came from here and there. During a piece I found it most interesting to choose, for a spell, to focus on member. Some were dancing in their eyes, visibly charmed by the sounds as we were, and they would roll with the music, and sometimes exchange a look of mini-euphoria with their fellow fiddler. Others were almost motionless, feet unmoving, expressions caged-in, not a sign of emotion, an overtly frozen-out part of the assembly which was however, crucial to it. The conductor’s was naturally turned away from most of us, but I suspect, for all his humble entrances (arm behind back), and his solemn bows once he had turned around at the end of a piece, he did in fact pull some rather bizarre faces. I was actually rather envious of those sitting behind the orchestra who will have got a full view.

One wondered who these people were. A few, I fancy, were classic school boffins, never celebrated by their peers. But there were also those whose great virtue is his music-making amid a sinful life of drinking and gambling. Some too one just couldn’t guess, for instance a long-haired women who I could only imagine meeting in the S-Bahn with her handbag rather than here in the Philharmonie. These people are lost in the world’s enormity of beings, and then find their own individual path to come together and form this extraordinary music-making organism

The pianist, on stage for two of the four pieces, was, I decided, definitely a very quiet man in all manners of life, hardly noticed by friends, family, or the world at large. Until, for a fleeting moment, he is a supreme player of the piano, swooping for the spotlight in a way that might be mistaken as melodrama. He wiped the sweat from his forehead whenever he wasn’t tapping, and he was hard to ignore, playing so many of his notes almost reluctantly, and with high caution, as if he might otherwise abuse the power of the instrument and forsake that fragile balance of which the conductor was doing so well to keep in sway.

Still, I simply have to download that Tom and Jerry cartoon. Its one of the very best.