schooled

I had alluded to it already in an earlier post. On Tuesday I went to another concert of the Berliner Staatskapelle under Daniel Barenboim. Again, the two names on the program were Beethoven and Schoenberg. And while the concert series was generally referred to as The Piano Concertos – all five of Beethoven's were on the bill – last night Schoenberg played the first violin, and did so in a rather curious way.

First we listened to Beethoven, though. His Third Piano Concerto is an easy crowd pleaser, full of pleasant rhythms, with lyric melodies in the slow movement and catchy tunes in the fast ones, and bedazzling with lightning fast finger dances across the range of the keyboard. Like the first concert I went to, this was as much as feast for the eyes as it was for the ears. Seeing Barenboim live is a treat.

However, there's something a little wrong when you go to a classical music concert for the visuals. Barenboim is a showman, and he enjoys the challenge of playing and conducting simultaneously as an opportunity for showing off. There were occasion when I thought that the quick and very visible flick of a hand, in a brief lull between his playing, was excessive. It probably didn't help the orchestra, but it shoved it into the face of the audience that Barenboim can do it, removing a hand from the keys in the middle of a piano solo. This little gripe notwithstanding, it was quite a show.

Barenboim could have left it at that, and no one would have complained. Some overexcited members of the audience jumped to their feet almost before the last bar of the roaring finale had passed. By the second curtain call, the entire Royal Festival Hall was standing, something I've never seen before. This was before the interval, and the principal piece of the night was still to come.

Schoenberg's Variations were next, preceded by an illustrated talk, as the program promised. I had no idea what to expect and was mildly shocked when Barenboim turned to face the audience and took to the mike. All entertainer, he set out to explain the intricacies of the music that was to come. I thought that was quite a brave, even bold move. Most had probably come for Barenboim and the Beethoven. Many had heard of Schoenberg, but not necessarily in favorable terms. Difficult, complex, modern, different – attributes like these have kept me from listening to his music before, and judging by the audience's reaction to some of Barenboim's comments ("Some of you might not be totally familiar with Schoenberg" – relieved laughter in the knowledge that there wouldn't be a quiz afterwards), I was in good company.

For the next half hour or so, Barenboim pontificated on the Variations, explaining how the theme is transmogrified almost beyond recognition, and yet recurs in each of them. Barenboim would isolate certain instruments ("Von Takt 164, bitte nur die Harfen und die Mandoline.") and contrast them with the theme, again and again. What would to an uneducated ear be mostly noise slowly turned into something that made a little bit of sense. It was like a masterclass in music appreciation, and Barenboim was a great teacher, entertaining and enlightening.

Once school was over, the Variations were played in their entirety, and I'm sure that everyone listened extra hard to find the subtle trumpet or evasive double-basses that had been highlighted earlier. In fact, so engrossed were people in the music that they didn't realize it was over until Barenboim shouted "That's it!" over his shoulder. Then the auditorium erupted in the same wild ovation that had characterized the Piano Concerto, and Barenboim was visibly pleased. The great Schoenberg appreciation drive had been a triumph.

But was it? Would the audience go home with Schoenberg in their heads, whistling the theme on the train and knocking the beat involuntarily? Barenboim seemed to doubt that and recalled a part from Milan Kundera's Ignorance intended to explain what was to come. Schoenberg once claimed defiantly that people in the streets would whistle the tunes of his pieces just like they do Strauss's. "Maybe not in my lifetime, but surely fifty years from now", he's supposed to have said. Kundera derided Schoenberg for overestimating himself. Barenboim thought Schoenberg had overestimated the future. Either way, the conclusion seemed that it is not time for Schoenberg yet. To make this point, (which couldn't possibly have been his point, after all this expounding and explicating) he turned his back to the audience, ripped his baton high, and when he brought it down, the orchestra exploded in a tumultuous rendering of Strauss's Unter Donner und Blitz polka, music that didn't need a single word of explanation. Ten minutes later, as the audience filed for the exits, the mood was elevated and there were grins on all faces. It was a special night.