Mahler

Garrett Lambur

I attended a performance of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra last night with my parents, aunt and uncle. They performed Mahler’s symphony no. 3 in D minor. All I have to say is Wow! They were unbelievable. I had not been to such a good performance in a long time. The conductor even fit the common mold of a somewhat possessed angry looking person. But he was a very good director. His style was hard to follow but he directed every little nuance within the performance, his motions conveying what he expected to hear. I had never heard Mahler before but was incredibly impressed with his work. What impressed me the most was that I felt as if a story was being played in front of me. There were no dancers or actors on the stage although there was one part of singing, it was short and was more music than language. Yet without any of these I could close my eyes and see a story being played out for each section. At one point it was a love story full of anguish and fighting, then it became a story of war, with all the destruction and death. I kept however coming back to the idea of a love story. This is perhaps because love is the strongest human emotion that I know of with more facets to attempt to understand than any other emotion. As with most symphonies there is most likely a story attached to it already but I would rather not know the original story and follow my own. I will not however divulge what my story was on this blog for reason’s of my own. Another part of the performance that emerged to me was that of the spirituality connected to it. There was a connection that one could feel listening to the music to something beyond them. I cannot say this is a connection to God or any other being but spiritually there was a connection to something more. The music instilled within me something more. The more and more than I listen to music, especially classical music, I begin to understand more and more why it is used during religious services. It can instill a feeling of a connection to something beyond yourself while you are listening to it. The scariest part being that you cannot always place what you are connected to as a person.