I went to the symphony last night. It’s something I promised myself in my new single life: a symphony ticket and an opera ticket once a year. Both are so special to me that I only ever want to see something I know really well. Last night, it was Stravinksy’s Firebird.
It’s a ballet, of course, but I only ever knew it as an orchestral piece, something my dad would play on our record player when I was a kid. It is one of those special classical pieces that I have probably heard a thousand times since my childhood. When you listen to a piece of music that often, it collects memories from different points in your life and becomes a sort of touchstone, a bar against which all other pieces are measured.
There is a whole culture around a night at the symphony. It’s about opulence and glamor and, yes, privilege. Davies Symphony Hall is located downtown, right next to the opera house and directly opposite city hall with its delicately filigreed dome. It’s a cold, windy part of the city even on a warm Fall night and the Bay Area elites tend to scurry across the Civic Center plaza in their finery trying to make it to the warmth of their destination. I’m sure it’s not lost on anyone that to get to either building you have to pass a significant number of homeless folk huddled by their shopping carts.
I had dressed up. I was even wearing eye makeup, which I only ever seem to do when there’s a significant chance I will cry. As I walked into Davies Hall, I felt the specialness of where I was and what I was about to experience. Definitely a 1% moment.
But I had forgotten how vast the difference between listening to a recording of a piece you love and watching it performed live by a 100-piece orchestra in a building the size of an airplane hangar. Stravinsky, of all composers, hammers this difference home with his blazing crescendos and his unabashedly violent percussion. At one point the percussionists were literally running between instruments.
But in the Firebird, it’s the French Horn that steals the show. One of the things I love most about the piece is you have to wait about 48 of the 50 minutes for the most beautiful theme to emerge, and it is introduced by a single French Horn. This is the point in the story where the Firebird, summoned by Prince Ivan using the enchanted feather she gave him for sparing her life, directs him to the egg containing the soul of Koschei the Immortal. Ivan destroys the egg. Koschei’s spell is broken, his captive princesses are freed, and his palace disappears. Ivan is free to marry the princess he loves. I’m not really sure what happens to the Firebird. I guess she just goes on incandescing.
There are other gorgeous themes in the first 48 minutes, like the lullaby. But I knew I was really just waiting for that French Horn. And when it came, and built into the mad, crashing finale, I could feel the power of the music vibrating through my seat. It was a visceral, physical experience, the entire building seemed to be vibrating with it. Michael Tilsen Thomas was performing balletic feats to conduct it, and I thoroughly regretted putting on mascara.
MTT, it turns out, actually knew and worked with Stravinsky. He saw the composer conduct for the first time when he was ten. I felt like Stravinsky’s greatness was somehow channelled directly to us through him. I have heard conductors described as “that guy flailing up front” and I confess I really don’t understand what it is about those hand and baton movements, sometimes so very subtle, often not even seeming to be in time with the music, that hold it all together. But I have never seen an orchestra play without a conductor and examining MTT as closely as I could, it was clear that he was drawing the performance from the musicians in a way that I will probably never understand.
After the show, I filed out of the symphony hall with the rest of the fancily dressed patrons and walked the windy downtown streets to my car. I had parked in the dodgy unattended Turk street lot I always book a spot in when I go downtown. I was still on a high from Ivan getting his girl, and it helped to mitigate the fear that I was about to be mugged, or worse, by one of the shady characters hanging around at the entrance to the parking lot. Please don’t rob me, I’ve just been crying about a fairytale ending.
Made it to my car, and played the Firebird loud all the way home. If you have never driven across the Golden Gate to Stravinsky, I highly recommend it. Just don’t wear mascara.
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