The last concert I attended pre-COVID was Anne-Sophie
Mutter playing the Beethoven violin concerto in Montreal.
I remember there was a huge parade exhorting political
action on climate change. It was only appropriate that
the subsequent COVID-bookend concert featured the same
soloist and music, this time in Washington DC. There was
a parade this time too -- about gay pride -- which almost
prevented me from leaving the hotel. To add to the
log-jam, a couple decided to have a wedding in the middle
of Rhode Island Ave. They not even gay -- just interracial.
For a while I was swept up in it, unwittingly becoming the
lone representative of the old-and-ugly tribe in the
proceedings.

The Strathmore Center could house 1800 people and was
only 2/3 full; the classical music circuit was a long
way from back to normal. This part-time venue of the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was rather down-to-earth.
Plastic chairs and wooden tables that needed a coat
of paint decorated the waiting area; even if the
concession stand was manned (it was not), champagne
would not been on the menu. I half-expected dressed-
to-kill contingents from the universities and embassies
to flock there. Instead it was mostly old-timers who
knew their music. Not a single soul applauded out
of place. (This was not your Carnegie Hall celebrity-
chasing crowd.) The front rows had a younger
demographic though; a tattooed guy sitting in seat
101 could have been a Navy Seal. The orchestra was
at least a third Asian, and there seemed all of one
African American there, a cellist. The BSO certainly
did not recruit locally.

Sir Andrew Davis was supposed to conduct, but was
replaced by a youngish Nicolas Hersh after testing
positive for COVID. Hersh immediately became my
favorite conductor. He yanked Elgar's Falstaff and
Frederick Delius's "Walk to the Paradise Garden" (I
have heard neither) in favor of the crowd-pleasing
Brahms' symphony #1, one of the few symphonies I
actually love, in the first half of the concert.
(In Montreal, Mutter played the second half too.
I love the new protocol!) The first and fourth
movements were resolutely rendered while the middle
stanzas were graceful, waltz-like, rich and sonorous,
as Brahms should be. The veteran BSO could probably
play without a conductor but Hersh's enthusiasm
certainly did credit to the piece. So did the concert
master (Jonathan Carney?); I had forgotten that the
second movement was like a mini violin concerto that
relied very much on one player's skill. I think
it was Audrey Wright who took over as concert master
after the intermission.

I half expected a rainbow color, gay-pride outfit, but
Anne-Sophie Mutter's strapless ball gown was plain
blue, in shades of cornflower, or that of a nurse's
apron. It had no embroidery of any kind, and was of
the simplest design I have seen her wear. The concerto
is correspondingly solemn, melancholic, and profoundly
moving. The first two movements were so overwhelmingly,
heart-stoppingly emotional and dramatic, especially her
entries into the cadenza and low register solo parts.
Even more than her Montreal appearance, she distilled
all the pathos out of the piece. Her intense facial
expression added to the atmosphere. (She and Hersh
were the only unmasked musicians, speaking of the new
protocol). It was as if she decided to shoulder all
the tragedies --- war in our time, COVID sufferings,
mass shootings -- and redeem humanity through
Beethoven's music. I think she even wore a cross.
It was the first time I had seen jewelry in the 20+
concerts of hers I've attended. Under the klieg
lights on center stage even her borderline blond hair
shone like meteorites. Shiny pedants wouldn't be
easy to miss.

In that sense, the centerpiece of the concert could
only have been Beethoven, who composed the concerto
during the Napoleonic wars and was disillusioned by the
Corsican ogre he once hailed as the common man's hero.
Beethoven's early compositions were exceptionally
intricate (like his first piano concerto), and his
late string quartets were explicitly meant for posterity,
way ahead of their times (and perhaps of ours still).
Yet his middle period masterpieces (the 5th piano
concerto, the violin concerto, symphony #7) have such
grand simplicity, momentum, and inevitability, if he
did not write them those pieces would have written
themselves. They were the purest expressions of human
spirituality.

This concert finally made me realize how technically
challenging the cadenza at the end of first movement
was. Mutter was admittedly a bit loose in the
beginning, but played to flawless perfection after
a few minutes of warm-up. Her interpretation, here
as in Montreal, was so different from that in her
recordings with von Karajan or Mazur -- so expressive
in the slow parts but fiendishly fast elsewhere -- I
hope she records it with someone, anyone. She is the
true auteur of her concerto performances by now.

The third movement restored the resolute mood at the
beginning of the concert. It was like a call to
arms, a heralding of hope and perseverance. The
soloist had to play almost non-stop, repeating the
main theme in two registers. In the past it was not
my favorite movement, but Mutter made it come alive;
the notes were like water boiling off the red-hot
cauldron of her Stradivarius. (Many of Beethoven's
violin sonatas are that way too -- in the hands of
novices they can be insufferable.) The mini-
"cadenza" is particularly thrillingly rendered. A
week later the movement was still playing in my head.

I was hoping there would be a substantial encore from
Mutter and the orchestra -- perhaps one of the two
Romances -- but in truth everyone was spent after the
Beethoven. She came back on stage and played Bach's
Sarabande, alone, as she had done in Montreal. When
I walked back to the hotel on Rhode Island at 11pm,
the revelers from the parade were still roaming the
streets.

PS --

For once, Washington DC had pleasant weather. I
managed to crisscross much of the district, even
to the outskirts like Adam Morgan, the embassy row,
the Eastern Market, and Georgetown. On the last
day I walked to the final (northeastern) corner I
haven't visited, and was incredibly moved to find
a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue
standing in an obscure park on New Jersey and G
street. It was a week after the 33rd anniversary
of Tiananmen Massacre, but wreaths of flowers still
adorned the statue. Truth, and remembrance, have
indeed persevered.