Passion

Upon my return from Puerto Galera last Easter, I was sent this well written article from the Washington Post. The experiment described in the article attempts to answer one of those questions I've posed myself in all my years of loving classical music. Are we capable of appreciating beauty in an unfamilar musical form? What if the music is performed by one of the best living violinists of our time on an exquisite instrument?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

My falling in love with the great masters, all those years ago, was tempered with the fear that classical music is a dying art. Music has since evolved to be banal, taken for granted on so many occasions. Diminished by the likes of media whores like Britney or Paris.



I simply do not expect modern music to move me in the same fashion as the Dvorak 8th Symphony performed at the concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra I attended at the Esplanade last Friday night. The familar piece is one I've heard before over and over again. Yet the music wrapped around me like the comfortable embrace from an old lover. The lush Czech melodies stemming from the composer's rich heritage and his love of his homeland. New insights into the piece from a different perspective. The inspired playing by a jaded orchestra challenged by an esteemed conductor from the old school.

Is the discipline and love of the great masterpieces a dying art? To be dismissed and left to collect dust in the rush of modern lifestyles now that so many of us have forgotten to simply stop and listen?