Photo: Dmitri Shostakovich, 1975.
[click photo to enlarge]
With the last bell-like tones of David Buck’s dulcet flute (by the way, have you heard such amazing and beautiful sounds from a flute before?) and the eerie calm of the fading chords of the strings, the end of the hour-long Shostakovich Eighth Symphony faded into the night at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The silence after the music evaporated into the air was mystical, spiritual and magical. It was as if the orchestra could not stop playing and the audience could not stop listening.
It was one of those incredible moments when you sense the connection between performer and listener as a web of near-physical individual tendrils that are loathe to be severed. The applause came reluctantly, no one wanted to break the spell, but it gradually came, growing like the first gentle floods of the tide returning from the sea. As we stood to take our bows, I looked out and tried, as I’ve been striving to do, to establish eye contact with some of the closer audience members and thank them for their applause.
I caught the eye of a man who is one of our younger audience members, probably in his late 20’s or early 30’s. The look on his face was amazing: he was so happy to be there, he was applauding wildly and had clearly been affected deeply by the performance. I remember thinking, this is why I’m doing this. This is what it’s all about.
For everyone else who was there these past two nights and was deeply affected by the journey that is the Shostakovich Eighth, thank you for being there – your energy fed us, and we gave it right back to you.