Went to the Seattle Symphony after work today because they were billed to play Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 in D Minor. It's one of my all-time favorite orchestral works. I arranged the entire thing for organ a few years ago, while I was at Georgia Tech, a feat of which I'm both proud and in disbelief. I don't like bringing it up in conversation, because I worry it might make me seem like some kind of idiot savant. Also, in a twist of fate that my fifteen-year-old self would have found worthy of contempt, I find myself wanting to fit in with the cool kids more and more, and arranging symphonies for organ is not something the cool kids do. This is a battle I'm waging with myself for no discernible reason. Readers of my biography will wonder why it was even included.
The program consisted of an orchestral piece by Ligeti (I don't remember the name) and a violin concerto by Bartok in the first half and Rachmaninoff's immortal Symphony No. 1 in the second. I had the bright idea to drive over to Benaroya Hall right after work so I could snag an excellent parking spot (such a dad thing to do, and I'm not even 30), so I had a butt load of time to kill. I went to the library, picked out a book by George Plimpton from one of the shelves, and got a few pages in. It was about the time he'd joined the Detroit Lions as their last-string quarterback for journalism reasons. I always liked George Plimpton because of his clipped upper-class accent, almost British. The foreword kind of ruined that for me by stating that something to the effect that "he had cultivated the most affected patrician accent by 1963". The part about it being cultivated definitely lessened its charm for me. Gore Vidal's accent likewise seemed to creep up on him on the coattails of puberty, because he was quite all-American in the one extant video of him from his pre-teenage years, where he flew and landed a plane all by himself. I wonder if this is true for other people with posh accents I admire, like Charles Rosen. I cling to the meager hope that there is some genuineness to their poshness, and it isn't just pretend Downton Abbey. I don't think I'm quite so affected, because the age for such affectations is past, but I had more than my fair share of cringe moments where I would try to pretend I was posh, particularly in college. Some may remember, though I hope no one does.
Where was I? Oh yeah, pretending to read George Plimpton's book at the Central Library while trying to figure out what to do for dinner. I ended up grabbing a parfait from a nearby Amazon Go, with more than an hour left till the start of the concert, at which point I remembered that there was going to a pre-concert talk at the concert hall before the main event and decided that that would be a much better use of my time than staring out the window of the Amazon Go with an empty cup of parfait in front of me for another hour. The person giving the talk was Seth Tompkins (I think, I didn't catch his name but looked it up after I came home), who hosts a morning show on 98.1 Classical King FM, our local classical music radio station. I imagine I must have heard his voice on the radio more than once, so it was a bit strange seeing the face behind it. He gave an intro of what was to come, highlighting the important themes in each of the works and their composers' lives. How they were all inspired by "imaginary folk music" (music composed in the style of folk music but not based on actual folk music -- a term that apparently Bartok coined), how they were all from countries that faced significant political strife (Hungary/Romania for Ligeti and Bartok and Russia for Rachmaninoff), and how Ligeti and Bartok were both born in modern-day Romania but are considered Hungarian composers because those parts were parts of Hungary back then.
I was a bit nervous about the Ligeti, because I know him to be a very modern composer. Flushed tonality down the toilet and all that. But this piece was very fun, well orchestrated, and overall a joy to listen to. The Bartok, too, was fun and light. Reminded me of Gershwin. Both pieces were great complements to the Rachmaninoff Symphony. Anything heavier would have stolen the spotlight from the main event. The Rachmaninoff Symphony, was by contrast, a little tame. I don't know if it was because I was playing it up in my head or because I've heard so many recordings of it over the years. I feel like I knew every note, which is not a feeling I often get with orchestral pieces. I wish there had been more fortissimos in the climaxes and the tempi in certain passages had been different (either faster or slower), and I even think I caught a very jarring wrong note from the wind section in the third movement that everyone else seemed unfazed by. For the first time I was seeing some of the weaknesses of the piece. Compared to the Bartok and Ligeti, it felt like the Rachmnainoff was trying to do too much. There was too much going on, too many voices saying too many different things. The melodies were lush and heart-breakingly beautiful, but the climaxes seemed a little forced.
But all in all I enjoyed it immensely. For 42 minutes, I was in the present, and it was amazing. I was transported back to Georgia Tech, when I was up to my ears in my Rachmaninoff project while endeavoring daily to make my life path cross with Enrique's in a way that seemed organic. I remember a time when I was watching him sitting at a table on the other side of the room at the Student Center cafeteria during lunch, talking very pleasantly with someone who was conspicuously not me, smiling and laughing and saying things I wished he'd say to me, and I felt rather defeated. I consoled myself with the sad thought that I may not have Enrique, but at least I had Rachmaninoff. Cue the afterlifey theme from the the melancholy third movement as I deconstructed what would have probably been something from the shawarma place. Those were weird times. My feelings about them are very mixed. Back to Rach. The only other criticism I have of the piece is that it leans way too heavily on the Dies Irae motif. Very overused. But hey, Rachmaninoff was twenty-two when he wrote this. At twenty-two I was putting on airs and pretending I was posh, contributing nothing to society, and being all in all a chump. He could have done worse.
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