I can't believe I dug chamber music...I used to be cool

I am not a person who listens to chamber music in my off time, and Mozart is generally not my bag. But there is something to be said for a live performance. It really makes you appreciate the mastery behind a musician’s precise, carefully orchestrated movements. Last Thursday I was lucky enough to receive a free ticket to a concert performed by The American Chamber Players at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Normally I’m a creature who hungers for quality lyrics – some mental bubble gum to chew on as I drive down the road. But to my surprise I found more than enough to be intrigued and entertained by in chamber music. Watching the cellist pluck, gyrate and fiddle at a manic pace was half the entertainment for me.

From his toes to forehead he was focused intently on the music. His eyebrows raised and descended in time with his bow. Throughout the entire performance his toes seemed to be flexed toward the ceiling. Of course, to master the timing and technique behind Composer Maurice Ravel’s challenging “Sonata in C Major for violin and cello” he must maintain an intense concentration and block out the impulse to be self-conscious.

Violist Miles Hoffman described the piece as still sounding so fresh and unreplicated that it could have been written yesterday as opposed to its 1922 inception. My God he was right!

I could imagine the rapid-paced melody fitting beautifully in any number of artfully shot horror movies. (Listen.) I could see the high heels of a damsel in distress running haltingly along a leaf-strewn cobble path, fleeing an unseen pursuer. That may sound overly imaginative, but rhythm and pitch are really all that a listener can focus on. Imagination must fill in the rest.

In a way the music is so plain and uncluttered with lyrics, that to find meaning in the music one has to focus on either the skill of the musicians, or imagine what it’s illustrating. I find it’s much easier to focus on the music experience if I’m trapped in a concert hall where it is pointless to contemplate all the hundreds of things I need to get done.

My only complaint is that musicians who play from sheet music seem wholly unprepared to indulge and audience who demands more with a standing ovation. If they don’t have an extra song printed on paper, the audience will just have to be disappointed. Perhaps, I’m wrong and this was merely and eccentricity of this band. But I generally think that a standing ovation with thunderous applause calls for one thing…more.