Went to my first live concert in absolutely ages this week. Arrangements of both Western and Chinese music for two flutes and piano accompaniment. Years of YouTube on headphones does not prepare you for- or perhaps elevates the experience of- being six rows away from the performers in a small hall. The shocking immediacy of those first notes of Debussy set my eyes bewilderingly wet.
Update: you weather years of a pandemic for one live concert and suddenly two pop up in the same week. I had a windfall concert of both Norwegian folk music and South Indian (Carnatic) music this weekend, hosted in a local church. I got to hear, for the first time, music from a Hardanger fiddle, played by a lovely Norwegian woman who treated us to both her national folk music and her first forays into Carnatic music, played on the same instrument. The Hardanger fiddle, considered a national instrument, features four strings played like a violin's, as well as a set of sympathetic strings underneath., which adds considerably to the texture. I went off on a YouTube trawl, and grew particularly fond of this lively duet, and 'Akademipolska' by Eric Sahlström (below). The latter features the nyckelharpa, a Swedish instrument sort of resembling a hurdy-gurdy.
Anyway, the Hardanger fiddle performance was followed by a concert on the South Indian stringed instrument the veena, given by her Carnatic teacher, Karaikudi S. Subramanian. I had heard veena music before on YouTube, but hadn't fully registered that there were very different kinds of veena, with different timbres. I was used to the rich, full sound of the Saraswati veena; this was another kind, whose name I didn't get to find out, sadly, but which had a subtler, rustier sound.
I hadn't thought about this gorgeous Schubert sonata in a long time, and Eric Lu plays my favourite movement, the lyrically marching Andantino, with a rich, shimmering grace. If you're new enough to Schubert to not know the D959 piano sonata (perhaps, like my younger self, too bewitched by the D960), don't miss it. It's not, on the whole, as immediately accessible as its younger brother, but worth the perseverance.
I had a passing acquaintance with Gabriele d'Annunzio's poetry before, but upon coming across a Reddit commendation of his collection Alycone, decided to revisit his work. An online anthology, from Alycone and other of d'Annunzio's collections, proved somewhat hit-and-miss for me. There's a lot of exaggerated Romantic despair (the kind which makes me dislike Baudelaire, say) and some dry parts, but at his best, d'Annunzio achieves an austere stillness and gentle wisdom which is genuinely moving. Take extracts such as:
Ma pur sembrarmi a quando a quando udire
Il gorgoglìo d'un'urna che una mano
invisible affonda, in quella pace.
('But still I seem to hear, from time to time,
the gurgling of an urn which an invisible hand
plunges, in this peace')
I was particularly interested by what I gather is one of his well-known works, Consolazione, which comforts a mother upon the return of a prodigal son. It is alternately bare, tender, in lines such as:
Non pianger più. Torna il diletto figlio
a la tua casa. È stanco di mentire.
Vieni; usciamo. Tempo è di rifiorire.
Don't cry any longer. Your beloved son
is coming home. He's tired of lying.
Come; let's go out. It's time to blossom again.
and then descends into the sagely lyrical optimism of renewal against the odds. The two stanzas below might be my favourite verses of Italian poetry out of all those I have read, especially the first:
Ti dirò come sia dolce il sorriso
di certe cose che l’oblìo afflisse.
Che proveresti tu se ti fiorisse
la terra sotto i piedi, all’improvviso?
I'll tell you how sweet the smile is
of certain things struck down by forgetfulness.
How would you feel if the earth suddenly bloomed under your feet?
Tanto accadrà , ben che non sia d’aprile.
Usciamo. Non coprirti il capo. È un lento
sol di settembre; e ancor non vedo argento
su ’l tuo capo, e la riga è ancor sottile
So much will happen, even if it's not April.
Let's go out. Don't cover your head. It's a slow
September sun, and I still don't see silver
on your head, and the parting is still faint.
This gentle faith in unseasonal renewal is deeply touching.
The poem does descend in the middle to less well-judged verse (I wasn't fond of the crude injunction 'Sogna! Sogna!' ('Dream! Dream!'), nor of 'delicate scent... like a faint breath of violets, a little wilted' (the icky worst of Romanticism)). But by the end we're brought back round to the tenderness of the first half:
Tutto sarà come al tempo lontano.
L’anima sarà semplice com’era;
e a te verrà , quando vorrai, leggera
come vien l’acqua al cavo de la mano
Everything will be as long before.
The soul will be as simple as it was:
and it will come to you, when you wish, light,
as comes water to the cup of your hand.
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