I I have always been curious about not so much when but how each individual notices that they are crossing the border into maturity…
What is the first sign so to speak?
As a child, I liked to play, and listen, for that matter, exclusively to music written in minor keys. The sadder, the better! Finding no beauty in “happy” music as if only sad music could make me happy. Then one day, while deciding which Brahms violin sonata to learn, to my surprise I chose the one in A major… and I realized I was all grown up… “happy” music could make me happy!
Of course, as there are no pure black or white colours in nature, (at least that is what I was told in art school), there is no music that is purely happy or sad. No matter what adjective we might use, great music always puts an emotional spell over us and on occasion allows us to discover something about ourselves we might not have known otherwise.
We begin our fifth season with one of our most beautiful memories: the first Orchestre Nouvelle Generation concert in May, 2011. Revisiting this evening with the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, which was on the program then and now. Beautifully nostalgic music bringing back nostalgically beautiful memories…
Throughout the season, together with our fantastic soloists as well as Mozart, Shostacovich, Saint-Saens, Dvorak, Schnittke, Paganini, Belkin, Elgar, Kapustin, Shchedrin, Ichmouratov, Piazzolla, we will be exploring all scales of emotions from sorrowful to joyful, tragic to humorous, serene to passionate, proving time and again that music, whether or not it is written in Major or Minor keys can make us happy.
After all, isn’t beauty in the ear of the beholder?
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