Pictured to the right is what $15 will get you at the Boston Symphony on a Thursday night when Maestro Levine is kept off the conductor’s podium by his precarious health (not that I could have seen him from this obtuse vantage point, anyway) and the program features an hour and half long symphony by Gustav Mahler, who — I’m sorry — is a total lame ass.
Luckily, Mahler was preceded by the world premiere of a double concerto by local composer John Harbison, performed by violinist Mira Wang and cellist Jan Vogler, who are married. According to the Boston Globe (here), Harbison has said he was conscious of writing for a husband-and-wife team of soloists and tried to avoid any rhetoric of aggressive musical confrontation or one-upmanship in favor of a kind of collaborative virtuosity and an interweaving of related musical narratives.
I was so impressed by Harbison’s double concerto that I’d like to commission him to compose a cello and viola duet in D-flat major for Mr. P and myself. It would begin dramatically, with the viola (me) squealing precipitato while the cello (Mr. P) droned imperioso. The tension would culminate poco a poco into an innovative cachopany of mixed instrumental and vocal noise made as the violist risoluto beats the cello and the cellist saltando with her bow (tempo di marcia). But just when the tension reaches an apex, the cello plays a tranquillo melody that is echoed teneramente by the viola. The piece ends in total harmonic bliss.
(Suck that, Gustav Mahler.)
