Next to me: wonderful conversations in the symphony

I have had some of the most fascinating conversations in my life at classical music concerts.

I always go to concerts by myself, so it is almost exclusively a solitary experience. And I say almost besides the obvious fact that I am sharing it with hundreds of people. I say it because, almost always, I become friends with whomever sits next to me.

I guess they’re loners like me, and maybe they haven’t be able to share their passion for music with anyone else, who knows? (Now I that I think about it, this is a potential subject for another post.)

The important thing is that I have been fortunate to hold interesting conversations with this special group of strangers. We generally talk about the composer or the works the orchestra is performing that evening; other times we talk about the conductor.

I do have to recognize, truth be told, that I tend to listen rather than talk. Most of these people are older than me, which means they have been seeing orchestras for most of their lives, so I try and take advantage of the situation to learn by asking them incessantly about their past experiences and recommendations. And this is something that they manage to do with pleasure. I guess that since nobody asks them about their passions they are more than happy to oblige.

I have heard amazing things from these people: one lovely lady told me she was mad at Mahler for being too intense, another one told me she loved Prokofiev’s piano concertos even when she despised him as a man. 

I remember one time I went to see Mahler’s Resurrection, a gentleman told me he used to see this symphony at least once a year with his wife, who passed away ten years ago. He told me that at first, he couldn’t hear this symphony for a few years, it was just too painful. However, he retook this tradition and he cried every time, of course, but out of pure bliss: he felt her close, he knew she was there with him.

All of these conversations have enriched my passion for going to see an orchestra perform live. We all are loners, it is true, but at least we get together for this communion of sounds that takes us someplace else -a land where we manage to not feel so lonely after all.