Prosed-out thoughts on the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin‘s performance at LOC last Thursday…
Takács blend,
but not like pre-
concert smoothie.
Hamelin: no hair
but substantive
flair.
Classical music is
alive and dying.
Not tonight, though.
All good seats
this house has,
right back-row Yoda?
Sometimes English syntax doesn’t do music justice, and music deserves justice. Yet the concert at LOC was–in the words of the Smithsonian–seriously amazing. To see the Takács Quartet live is to hear butter spread upon the crispiest of toasts. Hamelin, the resident badass Canadian virtuoso, is the lard to counteract the pervasive want for margarine by classical audiences.
The Quartet’s trump card is Beethoven on cello.
Hamelin’s trump card is being the best there ever was. If you have an hour to spare, listen to his interpretation of Rzewski‘s marathon variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated–a mind-numbing piece of protest music.
