There are those rare occasions in life where you see or hear something and you know that it is a once and a lifetime experience. Your mouth stays open in shock, and the pure beauty and power of that experience almost seems surreal. Everything seems blank, and it is just you and the moment. When you finally snap back to life, you know that you have had a once and a lifetime experience.
Tonight I had one such experience when I saw Itzhak Perlman at the
Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. When he played Dvorak's
Romance, Opus 11, for Violin and Orchestra, it was something for the Gods.
There are rare occasions in Classical music that a soft romantic piece can move you as much as the exciting famous ones, because there are very few people who can pull off the subtle beauty of such a piece. It is easy, in general, to make people feel alive with a fun piece such as Beethoven's 7th or Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture (not that I can, mind you). The soft beauty of what I saw tonight was just something that language cannot describe.
I just thought that I would share this with you guys, because if you ever get a chance to see this guy, then you really should. I could go into my normal tirade about how America, again, is last in the industrialized world on a key issue, in this case, funding for the Arts. I could talk about the power of the Arts in bringing people together and building culture and strong communities. That wasn't the point of this diary, although I have made that speech many times to people around me. I just decided to write this to share a beautiful experience.
I guess now it is time to open up the floor. What musician or piece of music have you seen that really made you feel like you were more whole for that experience? Please save the "I saw <insert famous musician here> and he rocked", unless of course, you really felt the way I described above.