Mahler 4

I used to sit for hours and listen to musicians all around me playing in an orchestra.  It was my job to listen.  But it takes time and money to go to a concert and since it was my vocation for several years, I often feel more inclined to spend both those things towards experiencing dance.

But one of the places where I work offered free tickets to a NYPhil concert of Mahler's 4th Symphony and a violin concerto by Auerbach.  This evening I got to sit and listen for nearly two hours.  Musicians take for granted moments of respite, moments of fury, of transcendent grace.  I love the teaching that I'm doing, and also the playing, but sitting and listening reminded me of another practice deeply valuable to myself and something that I want to pass along to my students.  It's something that has to be experienced, a sensitivity, a humility, a sincerity and conviction.  We don't encounter the extent of the emotions of which we are capable during everyday life.  And maybe even in a concert hall we cannot fully fathom them.  But to sit and listen to the gift of one no longer with us, one creating in our time, and the hundred performers who live and breath the sounds they imagined is quite remarkable.