(originally posted in April 2020 and shared by the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra FB page)
Going to see an orchestra play live has always excited me ever since I saw my first full orchestra in Armenia four years ago. This is because, despite hearing classical music since I was in my mother’s womb – my country, the Philippines, has no classical concert-going culture. Last February 28, 2020, I watched the Armenian premiere of “Eine Alpensinfonie” by Richard Strauss, and it was no exception to my anticipation – especially since I gathered background information about the piece from my professor beforehand. Usually, I don’t get the chance to read up on classical pieces before I go to watch them, so this was a notable first. Also, in my excitement, I brought a friend and two of my younger siblings – Abbie, aged 15, and Jivan, aged 7 – with me to watch.
We climbed up to the third floor of the hall where we sat a row above my classmates. During the introduction, Eduard Topchjan, the principal director and conductor, spoke about the piece. With my rudimentary Armenian language skills, I could only understand a few words. When I heard my professor’s name mentioned, however, I felt proud and told my seatmates about how he helped organize this piece, and looked at my classmates too, who were also proud of him. I also whispered to my siblings about the background of the piece: Strauss finished it in 1915; it was based on Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch, the “next level” of ordinary man, and the piece’s story was about climbing a mountain (which is allegorical to the ascent towards the state of becoming Übermensch).
Topchjan also made the orchestra play bits and pieces of it between his explanations, which I didn’t understand at all. Yet I watched my siblings smile and remark how beautiful the music was, so I smiled, too, because this was an opportunity for me to make up for the time lost to my college schedule and bond with them.
After a while, the piece finally began. Since I couldn’t really understand what Topchjan was saying, I figured out that the piece started because I heard the familiar and ominous “Nacht” theme.
I must confess that I focused more on watching the orchestra than listening to the music due to my force of habit. I took down notes of my visual observations. I wondered what the organ-looking instrument on the left was called (I later found out it was a celesta); watched a clarinetist put a string through his instrument (probably to clean it) and saw a blond French horn player wipe sweat off his forehead. As a violinist, I felt for the old cellist who accidentally and audibly hit his music stand with his bow. I also tried to spot which of the instruments were playing the melody. Jivan would ask for the names of the instruments, and he once remarked, “I can’t hear the harp!” Abbie and I had a favorite French horn player because he was cute (he looked like a brunet version of Walker Burroughs from American Idol). I told her that there were supposed to be twelve French horn players playing offstage, but Armenia didn’t have that many players.
I understood how the piece was divided in sections because the transitions were signaled by the stage lights changing colors and the instruments almost being silenced into “dead air” – but the notes were sustained, sometimes by the violins and sometimes by the percussion (it was as if the orchestra was one big piano and someone kept their foot on the pedal) – a phenomenon my professor explained beforehand.
An interesting note was how, one moment, there was a loud, sweeping sound like a car passing outside the hall from the right to the left, and I wondered if it was an actual car outside (though I knew the hall must be soundproof) or if it came from the orchestra.
While listening and thinking about Alpensinfonie’s story, I remembered the time I trekked the Himalayas in Nepal with my father for seven days in 2016. I paralleled it with the feelings evoked by the musical piece. When the music was bright, I recalled the happiness and relief of having reached a checkpoint in our trail. When it was gentle, I remembered the simple joys of seeing the mountain flowers and the blue sky. When it swelled dramatically, I saw the awesome memories of the staggering height of the snow-capped mountains ahead of us; the breathtaking view of the rice fields hundreds of feet below us; and the final stage of the journey, during which my father and I climbed next to a cliff with a four-kilometre drop. (My professor also told me that Strauss trekked the Alps as a young man with his father!)
Then, there was a part of the piece that was sublimely majestic and glorious, reminding me of the endings of triumphant movie scenes. It felt like the whole piece was going to end, but I knew it wasn’t so, because I was told it would end in the “night” part, drawing a full circle. After I came back home, I found out that the particular section was named “Auf dem Gipfel” (At the Top), and then it made sense.
Also, a while before “Auf dem Gipfel”, I noticed how there were a bunch of bells being jangled around on a stick, and imagined it was the sound of a cowbell up in the mountains. (My professor later said they were cowbells from Switzerland.) The playing sounded random and out-of-place, but I knew the effect was intentional. Later on, I smiled because the same bell-player took a sheet of metal and began wiggling it to mimic the sounds of thunder during the “Sturm” part. There were also two men near the drummers who were cranking two white cylinders (wind machines that were also used by Strauss before) to create the sound of the whooshing and wheezing wind.
When the storm’s tension cleared, there was a sound of rising triumph, and then the piece simmered and became gentle and soft, as the lights on the side of the stage morphed into a beautiful combination of purple, pink, and yellow. I recognized this to be the sunset. It reminded me of another sunset I saw up in the Himalayas during our trek, which had the same colors. That time, I was on the mountainside with my team to acclimatize (the process of going higher, stopping for about 30 minutes so our bodies could get used to the altitude, then going back down again and tackling that height the next day). The colors bathed our mountain as the sun sank below higher, white, jagged-edged peaks in front of us as we sat down. It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen in my life – I always see it in my memory as one with incomparable beauty; the height of what I’ve seen on this earth so far.
Back in the hall, I finally closed my eyes to listen to the music (mimicking my friend who also closed her eyes the whole time because she wasn’t wearing glasses and couldn’t see the orchestra well, so she just listened). When “Ausklang” started, I thought it was still the sunset, and its sad mood reached into me and touched upon a sadness I knew well – the painful, longtime grief of not being able to return to Nepal, my home of almost six years, which I left several months after my mountain climb. A part of me said, “You should’ve had this mindset of personally relating to the music earlier, not when it’s about to end! What a waste!” But I immediately brushed it aside to focus on my nostalgia. I think that’s what made the Sonnenuntergang-Ausklang part more special – it was the only part in which I was really emotional; the only part which I ascribed a personal meaning to. What happened was striking to me, because I don’t get intensely emotional over works of art, and I had never connected to a live orchestra piece so strongly before.
Therefore, I didn’t want it to end, and I wanted to linger there and cherish it. However, when “Nacht” began for the second time, I accepted it willingly because I knew the piece’s end was natural; a fact of life. I remembered what my professor said earlier in class that day about Strauss’ ideas on death when he wrote his “Four Last Songs”. He said that death was a part of life, and Strauss didn’t write “Four Last Songs” as something sorrowful, but rather as a contemplation of beauty – even death; the end of things – brought on by the natural course of time.
So, after the piece ended and the conductor froze, I joined the crowd in the uproarious applause and stood for the whole time, because I was grateful for how the piece moved me – deeply – and I appreciated the hard work of every musician there. As we left, my sister, a woman of few words, told me she loved it by the way her face was beaming. I did ask her if she liked the concert, and she said, “Yeah.” I also asked my brother the same question, and he said, “I want a repeat!” – meaning he wanted to see it again. And as for me, I wrote about this experience in my journal to memorialize it. I’ll remember it for a very long time, because it walked me down to the valley of sadness – and raised me up to the mountain of joy.