The student musicians came from the back of the church to just in front of the pews. They came in groups. The strings, the wind, the brass, and, once in position, they started tuning their instruments.
It’s hard not to love the atmosphere created by that mix of seemingly unconnected sounds. Here the lack of melody is pleasing, because it signals the certainty of the music to come. And that was J. S. Bach: the Orchestral Suite No 3, a Brandenburg concerto, the Easter Oratorio.
The tuning had finished, and there was an uneasy quiet. One of the percussionists was not in position. Eyes flitted towards the back. The professor in the pew shrugged. Then he came, hardly a young man, probably still a teenager, awkward in his concert clothes, but no apology on his face. He went to the large concert bass drums, tested them quickly and looked up.
The Bach began.
Down the central aisle of the church there were upright wooden chairs at the end of each pew. Extra seats. On the right hand side, in the second chair from the front was a smartly dressed older lady, sitting upright; behind her, an older gentleman in a suit.
As the first bars of the Orchestral Suite were played, the gentleman gave the lady a gentle, but definite, push on her back. It was celebratory, a raising of a glass.
And it was unexpected. That’s why I noticed it. The Bach flowed and I wondered about that little push on the back.
Were these grand-parents who had come to see a grand-child? Was their grand-son the percussionist who had held everyone up? Was he a difficult character and had it been a family battle getting him to study, and now play in the orchestra? Or the grand-child was another player, and the road to the concert had been hard. So, the little push was a family pat on the back.
Or perhaps they had no grand-children in the orchestra. Perhaps the Bach took them back to one of their own playing days, perhaps this Orchestral Suite was the music that had launched the lady’s career, and the man was giving her a ‘Well done’.
Or maybe their romance had begun at a Bach concert, with this Suite, and and as the music began, so the husband had to touch the one he had loved for so many years. This was their music. It had brought them together. And it had kept them together, and so here they were in the church, listening and remembering.
I will never know1, but that is what happened at the start of the concert.
1What I do know, if you have read this far, that there is a feast of free music in Vienna in May. For this is when students of Vienna University’s Department of Early Music perform, presumably as a part of their course. The standard is incredibly high. Each venue with its own beauty.
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