Last night Lisa and I were invited out to the symphony. There were two pieces on the program, two musical meditations on death:
La Llorona: tone poem for viola and orchestra by Gabriela Lena Frank and
Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms.
La Llorona was commissioned by the Houston Symphony, and had been given its world premiere the evening before. At the start of the program the composer addressed the audience.
La Llorona is based on the Latin American legend of the “crying woman,” an unhappy ghost that suffered a violent death. Frank invited us to think of this piece as a “ballet without dancers,” and imagine a troubled spirit unsuccessfully attempting the difficult transition to another way of being.
Until last night I was familiar with La Llorona only from the version Antonio Sacre tells as a scary story on one of his recordings, [1] so it was interesting to hear it told in another, non-verbal, medium. Frank’s was an inventive and beautiful piece of music, melancholy and melodic, interrupted by sharp slapping of boards together and eldritch moaning strings. Something, which I had never seen before, happened in the percussion section. Two of xylophone players leaned alternately over the front and back of their instruments with bows drawing them up across the instruments producing a low vibrant hum.
Lisa and I heard Ein deutsches Requiem together on our first date, Friday the 13th of November 1987 in Jackson Hall at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, played by the Nashville Symphony. Perhaps not the most auspicious date or the cheeriest of subject matter for a first date, yet it has turned out well for us. So although pleasant nostalgia may have colored my perceptions slightly, I still must rave about the performance of the Houston Symphony and Houston Symphony Chorus last night. It was a blast, an all-out musical extravaganza, thunderous and thrilling.
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