Hi *|FNAME|*,
The stalls in church were old.
Moisture, sunlight and time had worked their way in, making cracks that sounded the alert to the adults sat behind. Little hope of success for a choir boy up to no good in those stalls.
Keeping occupied during sermon after sermon, Sunday after Sunday, was a challenge, even for the most imaginative of 8-year-olds.
In an era before Angry Birds, the only entertainments were the tiny bibles, stacked on shelves under the stalls. Their covers were a purple-brown, creased like snake’s skin, corners fraying to reveal fuzzy grey cardboard beneath.
Each page was a waxy yellow, the edges a mottled red. Running your thumb through them sent flecks of dust and that comforting ‘old book’ smell up into the air.
Usually, I flicked through the pages without looking at the tiny black lettering. I was more interested in the smell, the softness, the rude messages scrawled by past generations of bored choristers.
Then, one day, I decided to read. Starting at the very back of the book. After all, everyone knew about Adam, Moses, Jesus. But what came next?
I squinted down at the narrow columns. And in the sleepy murmur of that service, a dragon, seven-headed, ten-horned and wearing seven glittering crowns came screaming back at me.
Hurtling after it came Michael, the Archangel, the pair of them locked in a battle that would determinate fate of heaven and earth.
I had discovered the Book of Revelations.
Angels dive and demons snarl, searing holy might against foul dark magic. Far beneath, a great beast crawls from the depths.
It slinks through the world, seducing the people, creating cults of wild-eyed fanatics. As stars crash about them, ripped from the heavens by the struggle above, they worship the dragon howling through the sky.
With everything in the balance, the full forces of heaven are unleashed. Rivers turn to blood. The sun sears the earth black. And then – absolute and terrifying – darkness falls.
In the final movement of Brahms’ 4th Symphony, this war is captured with more ferocity than any Hollywood epic. Lava courses through its veins, fissures tear the world asunder, volcanos spit magma into the air.
In Revelations the story ends with good triumphing over evil, with the founding of a new world. The tree of life emerges, suffering withers, and an eternal peace is won.
Brahms, though, seems to finish at the height of the struggle. Thunder still roars. Angel and devil still collide. The outcome, as yet, is unknown.
Amid the noise of metal rending metal, a hymn can be heard in the brass. Heavenly, promising peace. But it sputters, is extinguished by the darkness, and never returns.
Why?
Music matters because it asks questions, but rarely prescribes answers. Introspection, self-knowledge are required for resolution.
In a world of make it simpler and quicker is better, this has never been more important.
In reality, longer is better. The complicated things, the things for which there are no pre-made answers, are the things that matter.
Brahms 4th Symphony is one of those things. It presents us with a breath-taking challenge. A problem with no easy answer.
And then it asks if we are willing to take on that challenge. If we are brave enough to look for those answers. It’s an adrenaline-charged model for how life should be tackled.
The Recording
The work of ‘Grandfather Brahms’ is perhaps the last place we’d expect to find such wild-eyed fury. As musicians, we’re taught that Brahms is all depth and smooth edges, bottomlessly-rich sounds and rounded syllables.
Doing justice to this beast of a symphony can be difficult then – it goes against everything we’ve learned, it requires some Brahmsian rules to be broken.
Luckily, Carlos Kleiber was a conductor blessed with the wildest of imaginations, a ceaseless drive to make music and a physical facility that has yet to be matched.
And a hint of arrogance too, that meant breaking the rules wasn’t a problem.
In his early years, it is this facility and attitude that is most obvious. Everything is a ballet of gesture and bravura that almost masks the music beneath.
By his retirement, the need to impress and dazzle was no longer all-consuming. A Carlos Kleiber emerged, that seemed from another world. Zen-like, barely moving, sculpting the music rather than conducting.
These two men meet in Kleiber’s Brahms 4 recording, and this is what makes it so compelling.
The aristocracy, the majesty of Brahms is there. But so too is the mayhem, the apocalypse. Kleiber dares where so many others dare not, unleashing the full might of this music on anyone listening.
Get ready…
https://youtu.be/kQmOQHdNvcQ?t=31m50
Recent Comments