unexpected music
The boy’s face reflects accumulated exhaustion. It has been a very hard four days taking care of his mother permanently. Not long ago she was widowed. The doctor gave him no hope at her last visit, but she’s still there. The rhythm of her breathing connects with the desolation of her son who attends to her with delicate enthusiasm. It’s already night. He looks at her uncertainly, unable to keep his head up. Her exhaustion makes him hit the back of the chair with it, until he falls asleep with his mouth open and in an awkward position.
From nowhere, a waltz sounds as a faint reddish glow dissipates through the room. Her mother wakes up and she manages to get up on her own. The music seizes her from her body movements and she extends her arms towards an audience that does not exist. A group of shadows surround her to the rhythm of the waltz, but no one looks at her. She thinks she recognizes her late husband among the gloomy guests. She finally falls exhausted on the bed. They knock on the door, but it was already open and allows a glimpse of the shadow of death. The spectral dancers disappear with the last gasp. The son wakes up terrified. His mother has escaped life.
The concert
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Sibelius’s Sad Waltz, h.
Concerto for four horns by Schumann and Gaelic Symphony by Amy Beach. -
OSRM
Virginia Martinez (director). -
Victor Villegas Auditorium
Friday, December 16, 2022, 8:00 p.m.
The music that Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) wrote for the work of his brother-in-law, Arvid Järnefelt, entitled Kuolema (Death) is delicately beautiful. The Finnish composer premiered it on December 2, 1903, but it was not until a year later that he revised it and titled it “Sad Waltz”.
When one listens to the composition, one feels a special fascination from the first bars, since we are facing a ghostly waltz with continuous changes in key that circumvents the musical resolution that the musically educated brain craves. Sibelius is a master at playing wobbly harmonies and rhythm changes that hit the heart straight.
Sad Waltz, Opus 44, No. 1 is a brief orchestral work as a visiting card of the Finnish composer. The sound is so characteristic of Sibelius that the mournful character of the score fails to hide his admiration for Johan Strauss’s waltzes.
The melancholy with which Jean Sibelius adorns the sad story written by his brother-in-law is sustained by the timbres of the flute, clarinet, horns, timpani and strings. The composer’s pen makes magic emerge from these instruments, magic before which the listener can only settle in the dark room where the enchantment of our story today takes place.
#goodbye #dance