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| Muti and the CSO: from The Chicago Reader (Jan 2013) |
Classic music is too old
fashioned—it’s all ballroom dancing, white gloves, and cups of tea. Why should anyone in the 21st
century listen to it?
If this were true, movie
soundtracks wouldn’t be dominated by symphony orchestras. Orchestral music is in our blood, and
everything from the Jaws theme to the “shower scene” in Psycho
reminds us of this. Moments of great
emotion, suspense, romance, anguish, fury, and revelation always reach to the
seemingly endless resources of the modern symphony orchestra. A great instance of this is in the
conversation between the alien ships and the scientists in Close Encounters
of the Third Kind: they use music to find a common language, with the
humans (ironically) using synthesizers while the aliens respond with tubas and
other brass. It’s a thrilling scene and
it suggests something mythic about orchestral music and its ability to evoke
fantastic worlds both past and present.
When you listen to past masters such as Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky,
etc., the emotions are right there—as raw as the day they were written, full of
beauty, despair, anger, and pathos.
Like any art, it doesn’t age, and an attentive listener can sit down and
become part of the drama.
