Last night, E and I went with some friends to the Boston Symphony Orchestra to hear the Berg Violin Concerto -- played by the eternally youthful Christian Tetzlaff-- and the Mahler 9th Symphony. (Congrats to our friends who heroically made it through the 90 minute symphony!) James Levine, my mom's former boss at the Metropolitan Opera and now musical director of the BSO, conducted. It had been years since I had seen Jimmy conducting live. I periodically read about his left side tremors, and while I didn't notice any overt shaking, he clearly favored his right side.
I was particularly excited to go to this concert because I've been reading about both of these composers in Alex Ross' book, The Rest is Noise, and so I've been making new connections between these composers and their historical contexts. They were both, coincidentally, inspired by the deaths of Alma Mahler's children: Mahler first wrote his symphony in 1910 after the death of his and Alma's own 4-year-old (a little close to home since I have a 4-year-old myself) and Berg wrote his concerto in 1935 after the death of Alma's daughter from a later marriage, Manon Gropius.
I was surprised by how exquisite I found the Berg. I love his opera Wozzeck, but I've always had a harder time with atonality in instrumental music. E preferred Anne-Sophie Mutter's performance, but I love Tetzlaff's complete immersion in what he's playing. As for the Mahler, it's an emotional overload and leaves the listener feeling totally cathartic, but the most distinct moments for me were in the third and fourth movements -- the endless hum of the strings at the close of the fourth were transporting.
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