I Felt Lost in the Arms of Total Strangers

I love hugging and even more the sincere cheek to cheek touch while embracing. It gets me all I need and enjoy:  closeness, affability, giving love, accepting love. 🙂

Yet, hugging, upon my move to this beautiful wonderland, was confusing and stressful.

I felt lost in the arms of total strangers. I  did not know how to respond. I tried to reason: How this rather prudish society, not allowing nude beaches or nudity in films can do something so intimate as hugging? And how come we, Europeans who do not even notice a topless woman at the edge of a family friendly swimming pool, may wonder about an embrace of two fully dressed people? 

That may be the beauty of uniqueness in our baffling customs, each different in each corner of the world, each understood only by curious examination and explanation. 

A hug in my culture is rather a private affair, yet we kiss upon meeting a stranger! Baffling still!!

And so, for quite a time, an outstretched hand ready to shake was my way to go around the hug!  After a few years, getting to know this lovely, sincere, polite American crowd, I surrendered to the sincerity and generosity of a hug. I made it my own habit and became hooked.

And I have proof. Take last Sunday, for instance. With vigor I gave and happily received probably over one hundred hugs. What was the ado about?

MUSIC! Music and my precious dynamic appreciative expressive fun handsome audience! Last Sunday, March 8th , the people who attended a concert hosted by me appeared to be moved by the music, filled with joy, the sublime hung in the air, and a sincere tight hug was a fine gesture to anoint the moment.

That concert,  just like many prior, is designed to inspire the audience to chase after beauty. To peek into the greatness of the human soul reflected in music. To become a brave listener. To grow musical friendship among the guests. To awaken hidden niches of the soul that may stay dormant if it was not for the very tune just heard.

And so it goes: for the last concert I chose to feature an excellent fun Czech duo, Zuzana and Miroslav Ambroš direct from Prague. We sold out the beautiful cozy hall, we made fifty pieces of strudel, thirty five pieces of strawberry crumble cake, forty three pieces of a Czech wedding horseshoe cake, we fetched excellent Pilsner Czech beer, wine from Spain and Argentina and here we go! The passionate host chose to feature the authentic Czech accent she was coached to perfection so the audience had a true Czech experience since the musicians came from that land. 😍😍

And here we start, Tartini, Sonata in G minor it is, that Baroque intriguing  composer who grew up in a picturesque Piran, today in Slovenia, where my family travelled to pay homage to him by bowing at his impressive statue in the middle of an elegant plaza. A child of a long line of Pirano’s aristocracy, Tartini was trained by a Czech teacher Bohuslav Černohorský, that is why every Czech feels responsible for his glory ! Tartini studied at Padua university (est. 1222!) married beautiful Elizabeth at 18 to be happy with her the entire life (it is always to be admired), and spent musical life in Padua’s gorgeous  St. Anthony Basilica as a first violinist and a violin teacher. His music carries a bold melody line and devilish difficulty with double stops (two strings are played at the same time), trills on the upper strings and such. This sonata, dubbed Devil’s Trills, came to Tartini in his dream… 

Willibald Gluck comes next, born in Bohemia (!!) in a forester's family, studied in Prague, spent most of his time at the Parisian but mostly Viennese court where he was invited after he wrote a beautiful song for the empress Maria Theresa’s birthday. A beloved teacher of Maria Antoinette who happily advertised his music at the French court. Gluck offered a revolutionary reform of opera that he turned into a cohesive suspenseful story we enjoy today.  His lyrical “Melodie” arranged by Fritz Kreisler was a treat.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is presented with an elegant, intense, restless Sonata for Violin and Piano no. 4, the only minor key sonata out of thirty six he composed. Perhaps it reflects his long unfortunate European journey with his mom, beautiful Maria Anna, in 177-1778.  He desperately wanted to leave provincial Salzburg that had mere 16,000 people and no opera house, dreaming of cultured London with population of  750.000 or Paris with  550,000 Parisians loving art. He looked for a job there and in Strasbourg, Manheim, Munich, only to find none; while at the same time being rejected by Aloysia Weber whom he loved (he will marry her sister Constanza in in several years), and losing his beloved mother who died in his arms in July 1778 in Paris. His music in this sonata reflects disappointment, beauty, yearning and hope.

Amazing solo violin in Romani music by Sylvia Bodorová took a breath away from the audience, just like Dvořák's Sonatina in G Major written in America, where Dvořák spent almost three years as a director of a National Conservatory of Music of America, established in 1885 by Jeanette Thurber, a woman of incredible vision trying to define, with the help of Dvořák, the character of American classical music that was still being searched for.

The sonata’s second movement beautifully lyrically describes Minhaha waterfalls in Minnesota, the main melody came to Dvořák during the waterfall visit and he scribbled it on his white shirt cuff! A Czech always knows what to do not to lose the Muse’s whisper!

The sensuous musical gift to Edgar Elgar’s fiance Alice, Salute d’Amor, came next, full of lyricism and love. It is Elgar whose March in D known as Pomp and  Circumstance accompanies the world at graduations! 

The culmination of the program came with 1972 Libertango by Piazzolla that made everyone sway in the chair by the groovy tango rhythms (excellent arrangement by Miroslav Ambroš for piano and violin), and the grand finale was reserved for Ravel’s Tzigane, one of the most difficult violin pieces in repertoire. Ravel composed it for his best friend violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, but she was stricken by illness so the premiere was presented by another extraordinary female violinist,  Hungarian Jelly d’Aranyi. This Romani inspired music is full of unusual rhythm and harmonics, multiple stops, tremolos, arpeggios, left-hand pizzicato, all played with passion, bravura and precision, yet the essence of a Roma “wild untamed” music was not lost. The czardas-like end of the work made the audience riled up so much that the Hall shook in its foundations, the standing ovation had no end even after a riveting Hungarian czardas encore. 

And it is why I plan these concerts,  for the shining beauty of art : It unites us, it reminds us of the talent within, it hints great insights, it assures us everything will be all right, prompting us to see a real purpose of life, reminding us of “ambition that can teach us valour, temperance and generosity — and indeed, justice”, as wisely said Michel de Montaigne about four hundred years ago.

And that moment of happiness can be crowned only by one gesture: a tight sincere hug adorned by a cheek to cheek touch.

Thank you all for making this concert such a joyful affair, thank you, Zuzano and Míro for being such fun companions, ambassadors of chamber music and proud diligent musicians with a beautiful purpose, thank you Adélko, Vláďo, Petro, Míšo, Noemi, Emilko, Kači, Ollie, and Paľo Dobrik for photography!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/fbd91a_64836de0e9d84390b7456573ef049870/1080p/mp4/file.mp4