A Wonderful Discovery

Saturday night was first a frustration and then a delight. It was a night full of expectation: we had a Polish conductor and a young Argentinian lady pianist both of whom I never previously knew. The conductor was Antoni Wit, the General and Artistic Director of the Warsaw Philharmonic who previously studied conducting with Henryk Czyz and composition with Krzystof Pendenerecki and later Nadia Boulanger in Paris and the winner of the Herbert von Karayan International Conducting Competition in 1971 and has since conducted a number of world class orchestras like the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philhamoniker, Dresden Staatskapelle, Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Royal Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony etc. The pianist was Ingrid Fliter, winner of the 2006 Gilmore Artist Award and had performed with a number of orchestras in America, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Holland, Hungary and England. The program of the evening also looks attractive: César Franck's Chasseur maudit (The Accursed Hunter), Saint Saëns' popular Piano Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven's Eroica. I was all excited until it was time for me to go in with my friends when I was struck by a thunderclap. I forgot my ticket!  I immediately rushed down to the ticket office in the hope of buying another one. I had no luck. It was sold out ! Disconsolate, I went up the concert hall again to tell my friends to go in first. I could go home and come back later but then I would definitely miss the first part of the concert which formed the most exciting part for me. I decided to try my luck. I talked to the entrance staff. I was directed to talk to the floor manager. I did. Nothing could describe my joy when I was told that I could go in without the ticket but only after the first piece provided I could find an empty seat. I was sure I would. After all, it was bought by me! All my friends were surprised to see me asking them to move their legs so I could get to my seat and asked how came I could return so quickly. I told them I was earnest in asking for a favor for a concert I very much like to attend and that the manager could be sure that I was honest. The manager believed my story.

I listened to the first piece on the screen outside the hall. The acoustics left a lot to be desired but I heard the piece before so I had to fill in the blanks in the near silent passages. The piece is about what happened when a German count would not stop hunting on a Sunday morning. It's taken from a romantic ballad by Gottfried August Bürger called Der Wilde Jäger (The Wild Huntsman), who heard the Sunday church bells and choral chanting of holy hymns but decided nonetheless to race across the fields, meadows and moors in pursuit of his favorite sport: hunting but suddenly found to his horror that his horse would not move, his horn fell silent when he heard a voice: "Sacrilegious man, be hunted for ever by hell itself" whereupon flames lept up from all sides and he was chased by a pack of demons. One can imagine the initial joy in Franck's symphonic poem about the count's hunt, followed quickly by dark passages of fury and fear which the composer captured excellently. It opens appropriately enough with the hunting horn, whose mood changes from one of joy to one of dark menace and mad infernal chase ending in a fury of unrestrained but abrupt violence from the timpani, cymbals, brass and strings etc.
 
The second piece of the first part of the concert was a real delight. Ingrid Fliter displayed the peculiar romanticism of the Latin race in the lightness of touch in her quieter passages which she rendered exquisitely, giving them a very sensuous and poetic feel. Yet her play could be powerful and very structured in other passages. The result is a very dramatic contrast between strength and softness, between male and female, yang and yin, slow and fast, rigidity and suppleness, a very human piece played with heart and soul. As expected, she got thunderous and prolonged applauses to which she responded with alacrity by giving us two  popular Chopin pieces in which she showed to advantage her very nimble finger work but always with her very personal style of playing. One of them was the Fantasie- Impropmtu in C sharp minor  which she played at an almost break-neck speed.. 

The final piece, Beethoven's No. 3, popularly known as the Eroica from Beethoven's so-called "middle period", needs little introduction. Beethoven originally thought of dedicating it to Napoleon but he tore off its first page and threw it on the ground when he learned that Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor. But it would take one struck by emotional numbness not to feel the impact of the rousing music, methodically strengthened by the very firm tonal and harmonic structure of the piece. The HK Philharmonic gave an excellent performance under the baton of its Polish conductor and conveyed with precision the flow, the conflict, the moments of tenderness, sadness especially in the second movement, even a little frolic and also the nobility of the piece with the full emotional power of the music. Somehow, my "luck" in being denied and then admitted seemed to add to my joy that evening. 

;