Romantic Piano by Dinara Klinton and the joys of familiar music

I had the pleasure of attending the Romantic Piano concert by Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton last week at St-Martin-in-the-Fields. It was an evening of culture in sombre times, and the now familiar name of the besieged town of Kharkiv felt even closer, with the program noting it as Klinton's hometown. The altar of the church behind the piano was bathed in blue and yellow lights, and concertgoers would have seen anti-Putin protests across the road at Trafalgar Square in the evening. 

As I took my seat in the pews it struck me that it had taken more than 3 months in Europe for my first concert, with the winter wave of Covid in Europe having complicated plans. I later realised that it was actually my first concert in more than a year, since before Sydney's four month lockdown. Or just my second musical event in the two years after I caught Sir David McVicar's rather dark and foreboding Don Giovanni at the Sydney Opera House on 23 February 2020, before things fell apart. 

Again, I was struck by the power of live music, even when performed by a single musician. Not only is there a spatial, physical aspect of music that cannot be replicated by even the best sound systems, but also a kind of communion through the shared physical presence with other audience members and the musicians. It also entails a different level of commitment and focus, a welcome diversion from our highly distracted modern lives.

There was a sweetness in Klinton's rendition of the music, and one of the movements of a Beethoven sonata felt almost Mozartian in her hands. Chopin's Aeolian Harp was soothing to the point of feeling  therapeutic. The initial phrases felt like cascading warm waves of water soothing the tired muscles of both my physical and spiritual bodies. Even though aeolian means arising from the wind, the element I felt it invoked was water, especially the flowing waves of the left hand.

With several familiar pieces in the selection of the evening's music, I realised the extent to which the familiarity with the music allowed me to appreciate the technique and interpretation of the musician. Klinton tickled our ears with every unforeseen accent or emphasis of a note or phrase, the departures from the version known in my memory becoming a source of unexpected delight especially in Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. 

When we listen to music we have never heard before, the musician plays the role of an intermediary, introducing us to the work of the composer by bringing it to life for us. 

Perhaps listening to familiar pieces then is a way for us to repay our debt to the musician, and engage as it were, in a conversation where it is the musician who is being heard rather than the composer, who changes roles and becomes the facilitator rather than the speaker. 

Therein lies the beauty of classical music and perhaps true art more generally. With different artists you can enjoy the same piece as if for the 'first time', many times. There is a relevant quote by Proust on the subject of listening to music for the first time, and the role that memory plays, but I shall let it pass for fear his one or two sentences will double the length of this blog post.

Despite currently being an itinerant nomad with no fixed home and certainly no CD player, I was very happy to purchase a CD of Dinara Klinton (with the proceeds going towards the humanitarian efforts in Ukraine), and will certainly keep an eye out for her future performances.  

Here's an example of her sublime, elysian, Aeolian Harp, which puts the version I have in my music library in the shade:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RU55glsPXc 

Perhaps a topic for another post: Thank God for the Romantics, what a plain, boring world we would live in if not for them...