Kolja Blacher
Yesterday evening we went to the Palais des Beaux Arts to feast on Stravinsky. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of a handsome young Russian, Vladimir Jurowski, played a scherzo and the Rite of Spring with extraordinary panache. Everything was brilliant (Jurowski is delightful), but the highlight of the evening was surely Stravinsky’s violin concerto. The violinist, Kolja Blacher, was brilliant. He played on the ‘Triton’, a Stradivarius violin made in 1730. How many instruments, I wonder, would still be played at performance level almost three hundred years after they were made?
The privilege reminded me of a visit to Genoa with a parliamentary committee many moons ago. The new (Carlo Felice) opera house had just been finished and, as a special treat, we were invited in. I forget the name (apologies, whoever you were) but the then ‘curator violinist’ treated us to Paganini’s caprices but – and this was the extraordinary thing – played on Paganini’s violin, the so-called Cannone of Giuseppe Guarnerius del Gesu, the violin that Paganini had used all of his life.
Music is like a magical sweet shop, everything is free, you can eat as much as you like, free of charge, and there are only positive consequences.
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