As I had entered the Alexander Sting Quartet performance at Baruch I promised myself to break the everlasting love hate relationship between classical music and me. I decided to look for elements that I had never noticed before, something that will help me stay focus, and appreciate what I was presented with.
Looking carefully at those four musicians performing, piece after piece, beautiful arias, I became hypnotized by the movement of bows. They were going up and down, left and right, and paused and quickened, their movements were natural yet mechanical. I believed that they transformed into dancers that were bounded to participate in this performance. As the viola, and the violin were bouncing up and down, the lead violin and cello were taking a break, and than the roles switched and another duet took the scene. It was a dance without a choreographer, a dance composed by notes, and strings and emotions.
This interaction between the instruments and the musicians led my mind wonder to a different thought, the rapport between Alexander String Quartet and the Muller Quartett that we saw at BAM. I didn’t believe that Muller named his piece solemnly based on the 4 characters he staged; I believed that there was something more to it. As I watched the performers execute their scripts I begun to associate the instruments with the characters of Muller’s play. The violin on the left was Merteuil, the one who leads, who has the most to say. Opposing her was the cello, Valmont, who playing the lower notes was more particular about the choice of word, more sentimental. And lastly two young lovers, the second violin and the viola; they played together, as nothing else matter to them. They were vibrant and passionate.
I feel that I accomplished the goals I set for myself; the initial feeling was altered with an eagerness of exploration. I look forward to future encounters of that genre, and wonder where will my imagination take me next time.