Diary In New York / Day6 – Jan 24, 2017 by Eitaro Ogawa

After 5th day of Barenboim’s performance,I came back to my hotel just now.
It is worth the gift of God!
It is beyond my description!

Bruckner’s life was not particularly happy, especially in the late lifetime, but it was particularly terrible at the time of composing this song. His Vienna’s life was misfortune economically and socially, and just before the end of completion of the Third Symphony, he experienced the miserable that the audience was all left on the way at the premiere of the 3rd Symphony and there were only 20 people at the end of the show.

But the gaze of this work, the purity of the music as a prayer, the skill of the technique cast in the composition, the transcendental joy which would combine Bach’s huge organ fugue with Beethoven’s Ninth, how did this person achieve in the misery of life or in his life struggle?

It should be said that it is closer to the miracle of a mystic who received the grace of God rather than the work of genius of modern art.

Wagner completes “Der Ring des Nibelungen ” at the same time, Brahms completes the First Symphony, but try putting these three pieces side by side. People see the greatest genius of human history through “Der Ring des Nibelungen”, see Brahms’ great masterpiece, but when we are really touched by Bruckner’s 5th, we feel the grace of God directly, so that we might never think about the author’s affairs. Painfully, Bruckner himself was unable to listen to this song before death, but if he listens to this song by Barenboim tonight, he will say that he never myself composed this. The grace of God made me write what else to do.

When the mysterious introduction of 1st movement dedicates to the question of God who is isolated, suddenly the choral of God’s revelation runs through the heaven. The conversation between angels, and the advent of the beginning, the main part of relief and conflict of the soul begins. Music repeats prayers and conflicts and deliberate elevation. How to sing a rich sound like a low-string deep sensual thrusting song to a song, the brass sounds like a voice of God, and how the freshness that a wooden pipe penetrates both Fortissimo and puts the best hand in hand.

There is no need to point out where Barenboim has conducted skillfully. He stood in the middle of the orchestra and was playing music together. The Barenboim concert at the time does not tolerate others with a freedom, play, sensuality and prayerful ecstasy waves.

It is the only defect that the fifth part of the 2nd movement was over optimistic. This part of the record of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Barenboim on young days showed the best performance in many masterpieces, but today’s performance did not feel that deep empathy.

But other than that! Barenboim’s 3rd movements, which are particularly good at Bruckner’s Scherzo, are doing great, the 4th movements are extremely dynamic, with each part doing their own freedom on freedom, from the thematic composition from Fugue, everything is brilliant on the overall bird’s-eye view, just a supple of the progression of the sound, just the propulsive power, the deepness of the sound, the glare that is radiated from the deep place can only see. The effect of the performance is extremely intense, but it does not come from the outside. The force full of musical meaning with no emptiness continues.

Lastly it is ten minutes of euphoric nod to be impressed and not clinging. The huge of the coda is unparalleled. Anyway, this man grows even bigger in a few minutes from the beginning grand coder. The venue reaches the extraordinary giant and intensity that the venue has in the honor of God ‘s glory that continues everywhere, and the venue is surrounded by the glare of heaven with the rising crescendo.

8 horns, 6 trumpets, 6 trombones, timpani player stands on both wings and wraps up the venue with roar.

Barenboim who finished the command did not answer and went down to the orchestra and dropped his head or sent eye-contacts for nearly two minutes at the commander and received a couple of minutes with looking at the audience. I do not know how many times I heard this person’s command tens of times, but this is pretty rare.

*

One year ago, on February 14th, I invited my parents to Suntory Hall, and we listened to them by our husband and wife, this is the Fifth Symphony directed by Barenboim. Even though I invited my mother to a concert or prepared tickets for my parents several times, it was my first time to go through a concert together with my parents. Just after a month I thought that I was in a life that allowed me to take time to invite my parents to a concert. My father suddenly became a guest of unconditional.

Suddenly without omen, my father set out on a journey to the heaven.
He must have listening to these God’s music while going to the heaven!