Classical Musicking Happenings

Well, this week was quite the adventure in musicking; it started with a concert and ended with me close enough to a Stradivarius to steal it. Woohoo!

So I mentioned earlier that I was going to see the St. Louis Symphony and the world-famous violinist Gil Shaham as soloist. Well, all I can say is that the concert rocked my white cotton socks off! If you ever get the chance to see a great violin concerto, do take the opportunity.

On Saturday, Shaham stopped by one of the local music schools to teach a master class open to the public. For those uninitiated, a master class is set up with a small group of students playing one at a time for a master and receiving critiques/pointers/tangential jokes afterwards.

But that's all trivia, because Shaham plays on a Stradivarius, and he brought it along. Strads are basically mythical to violinists; they are, I would argue, the greatest instruments in the world. If nothing else, they are the most valuable by far. Shaham's 1699 Stradivarius is worth about 2 million dollars at least. So, of course, I expected it to be encased in a massive metal sarcophagus with armed guards surrounding. Instead, Shaham walks in with a beat up old case and sits down across the aisle from me. It was so unassuming that I thought he just picked up a spare for the particular lesson. But he opened the case, and there it was. All I can say is, all the myths are true. The instrument itself is mesmerizingly beautiful, and the sound...mmmmm... Gil picked up his instrument to play a fast example passage, and all hell broke loose. I sat not ten feet away, and the sound just blew me away. I don't really know how to describe it; it's so pure. It's not really earsplittingly loud, but it's incredibly focused, maybe? The sound just rings and rings and rings forever after a lift. My girlfriend, who is a violinst herself, said the sound was so big as to almost be painful to listen to. In the quiet words of our favorite Top Gear presenters, it was epic. I can't even really think of a witty analogy at the moment, it was just that good. I left satisfied, for sure. Whew.

-Charles

PS: I had a WashU interview afterwards. I have no comment; it was pretty boring. Not particularily bad, but not memorable. My interviewer was a sorority-dwelling art major during her formative college years. You can imagine that we didn't have too much in common to chat about. Meh, I just hope that pro-St. Louis bias works towards me in admissions. Harvard interview on Thursday!