The Sound Of Music

It was a concert, classical music, Sunday afternoon, students. There isn’t much to say about it. I walked over there, I listened, I went home, that’s it.

The temperature was around 5 degrees, the sun was shining, there was no wind, I was wearing a parka, and the world was a good place to be.

The ensemble is called Les Petits Violons. I’d only heard them once before, that was about 6 years ago.

“The hills are alive,” sang the Maria character, played by Mary Martin and by Julie Andrews in the Broadway and film versions of the famous musical, respectively, “with the sound of music.” I don’t know what kind of music one hears in the hills, but, unless we are auditioning new audio equipment, the sound of music isn’t what we usually focus on. What we pay attention to is the melody, the words, if there are words, the quality of the performance, the mix if it’s a recording, the emotional temperature.

The first time, though, that I heard this group play… Well they started with Mozart, a string orchestra arrangement of one of his quartets, and when that first note hit, the world changed.

That’s heavy, I know. This is not a world class ensemble, they are not famous, they don’t, as far as I know, record - not commercially anyway. They are students, “composé des membres les plus avancés de l'École” according to their website; some look to be as young as 14, most are older.

But what I’m saying is this. The sound they made was unearthly. The music was beautiful. They played Mozart, they played, if I remember correctly, Kreisler, and they played Britten. But it wasn’t the music itself that mesmerized me; it was the sound of it, a live string orchestra playing the world’s great music in a room optimally designed for acoustics. I can’t describe it.

So I finally made my way back there, this past Sunday, and it happened all over again. This time I was ready for it, so those first notes didn’t take me by surprise. Ha, I said, do your best.

And the music did its best, indeed. I was transported. You close your eyes, you’re not there, there is nothing but the sound, the notes, it’s everywhere around you, you’re not touching the ground.

The entire affair lasted an hour. They played Mozart, Kreisler, Elgar, Telemann. The last movement of the Telemann was entirely pizzicato, and I could not describe it without lapsing into purple prose. Words fail me.

And so I left there a bit after 17:00 and walked out into the still beautiful air, back into the world, which was dark now, this being the first day of standard time, back to the normal sounds of traffic and people talking and The Rolling Stones playing in my ears. But the world was different from how it had been an hour before.

They play again on December 12…