Bravura brilliance
versus simple human decency
By Michael
Moriarty
web posted April 16, 2018
However, it’s
been quite a long and painfully challenging week!
Not only did
I hear, in last night’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s concert, a generous
display of both “bravura brilliance” as well as the profoundest of human
musical decency, I, and the entire world, have experienced, in recent days,
both the dregs of human behavior and the most technically brilliant and
decisive response to such behavior.
To make
the profoundest of both musical genius and musical decency clear, one need
merely in include, in one’s own concert program, as was done last night, one of
J. S. Bach’s movements from his creations for solo violin.
Esther Yoo made what I
believe was her Vancouver debut with the VSO by performing the Sibelius Violin
Concerto.
Ms. Esther Yoo and Her Stradivarius
The Bach
piece was merely an encore, but what an encore it was!
Being an
impromptu selection and not having the title of the piece printed in the
program, and not really being able to hear Ms. Yoo announce it, I’m guessing it
was the Andante from Bach’s Sonata # 2 in
A minor, but without the repetitions.
I
could very well be wrong about that!
God
willing,
the
frighteningly gifted Ms. Yoo
will forgive me.
At any
rate, it was performed more like an adagio than something in andante tempo.
It was
also riddled with ever-treacherous double-stops.
However,
after Ms. Yoo’s principle selection, the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor, double stops, plus any other challenge
to violin virtuosity, such as harmonics or arpeggios tossed off at blistering
tempos, the Bach encore was divinely humble and almost sacredly chosen to make
a most breath-taking point!
Bravura
for the sake of bravura is inevitably a necessary career move for any ambitious
soloist.
I doubt if
anything from the entirely major canon for solo violin is more challenging or
more exhausting to master than the Sibelius Violin
Concerto in D Minor.
Sibelius,
being a kind of failed violinist himself, seems to take revenge upon all other
violinists by handing them this concerto’s mega-ton first movement.
I am not a
fan of Sibelius.
My God of
music has been, is and always shall be Johann Sebastian Bach.
All other
composers, including the likes of Beethoven, Mozart and, one of my most
favorite giants, Dimitri Shostakovich, can only hope to pay obligatory tribute
to Bach.
They cannot,
in any way, surpass him.
Bach
appears to me to be the virtual creator and, yes, God of diatonic harmony; and,
therefore, the virtual God of Music.
Now what
do I believe, is, as I described, the “breath-taking point” that Ms. Yoo was
possibly trying to make with her Bach encore?
It
is depth of thought
and
feeling
And
not technical virtuosity
That
can transform
Any
art form
And
its creations
Into
a momentary religious experience.
Having, in
light of Ms. Yoo’s super-bravura performance of Sibelius, so clearly made the
above point, Ms. Yoo, given her clear understanding of that very, very
troubling irony about art and artists – that technical brilliance is no certain
insurance of truly great art – Esther Yoo, I feel, is now obliged, in the
context of every “Bravura” display of her technical gifts, to give us a glimpse
of the temple that Johann Sebastian Bach created out of.
Now, my
opening paragraphs to this meditation is, I believe, obviously referring to the
recently homicidal obscenities perpetrated, again,
upon the Syrian people by their indisputably villainous leader, Basher
al-Assad!
The
Twin Soul to Kim Jong-un.
And our
President, Donald Trump, has hurtled, at both of these indisputable villains,
al-Assad and Jong-un, increasingly obligatory challenges!
“Cease
and desist!
Or
There
will be increasingly huge
Prices
for both of you to pay!”
President
Trump and his divinely brilliant military advisers, along with the growing
coalition of England and France to support him, delivered, yet again, another
clear message to the most blatant displays of villainy we have ever seen since
both Hitler and Stalin.
Meanwhile,
a man I greatly admire, but whose only and persistently major disagreement with
President Trump has been the President’s handling of Syria and Bashar al-Assad,
Tucker Carlson?!
Patronizing
or Atheist?
In the
midst of all of Mr. Carlson’s brilliance, there’s a profoundly bigger picture
that he, with his unrelenting admiration for Vladimir Putin’s neo-Soviet
Russia, has either patronized or, the only other alternative, Tucker Carlson is,
as admirers of Russia are obliged to be, an atheist.
The
“bigger picture”: Judeo-Christianity.
You cannot
be the undeniable beneficiary of a predominantly Judeo-Christian creation,
America, and blithely ignore the blatantly obvious threats that the Middle
East, most of it, has, for Centuries, made to Judeo-Christianity.
America’s
literally Biblical obligation to protect the very creators of the Old
Testament, Israelis and Israel, seems to carry no weight with some very hip,
and eloquently fashionable Americans.
Of all the
many, very disturbing developments in the United States that Tucker Carlson
regularly and most justifiably warns us about, one of the most disturbing is
Mr. Carlson’s own refusal to see the history that obliges America to treat
Israel as almost a State-like territory within the meaning of America.
Syria’s
present and horrifyingly repeated Evil represents not just the malignancies
within Bashar al-Assad but the entirely diabolical history and intentions of
Syria’s present allies: Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia and a shamelessly tyrannical
Iran.
I believe
that President Trump, his military and his allies of France and England,
reached a kind of military and diplomatic perfection with this week’s bombing
of just the chemical factories in which the by-now, infamous poisons of Syria
were made.
With a
miraculous and most astounding minimum of human injury, the Trump Coalition sent
the most carefully considered and flawless message to a few of the major
villains of the world!
America is
back, thank God!
And the
Free World is once more in charge!!
Those,
like Tucker Carlson, who blindly side with an unashamedly Neo-Soviet opinion of
things?
Not even
Neo-Soviet Russia’s supposedly best
friend for ten minutes, Donald Trump, can put up with the Truth about Vladimir
Putin’s ultimate intentions: REBUILD THE SOVIET UNION AND, WITH RED CHINA’S,
NORTH KOREA’S AND IRAN’S INVALUABLE HELP, END ALL DEMOCRACY WITHIN THE HUMAN
RACE. 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy
Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order
from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper,
12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.
He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty.