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Last Night’s Concert
Yesterday evening, I attended a concert at The Bob Carr Concert Hall in downtown Orlando, a short walk from my home. The featured performance was Itzhak Perlman’s playing Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin in D major, op.61. The sell out audience of 4,000 was entranced and moved. To me, it was a testimony to the finest in human art, western civilization and the superb achievement of two individuals who overcame the enormous disabilities of the composer’s deafness and the violinist’s crippling polio to reward all of us for eternity. Also making it possible was the talented work of conductor Christopher Wilkins and the dedication of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra’s seventy musicians.
I had heard Beethoven’s concerto many times before on recordings but Perlman’s playing, those rich warm tones and the deft precise fingerwork made every note count and come alive with a soul of their own. More dramatically, his entry and exit from the stage on crutches, marked by each laborious step after the other was accompanied by rapturous applause from the audience. Several women sitting next to me had flown in to Orlando from Peoria, Illinois and had gotten up early in the morning to scrape the ice off their vehicle and clear a long driveway to get to the Chicago airport.
For me, each step and the audience’s ovation were a triumphal recognition that Beethoven’s work will live forever and of the Jewish and Israeli will to survive and thrive in a hostile world and enrich it beyond measure against all adversity, calumny, and envy.
