Promming with Mahler

Martin "Whooshing" in front of the Toledo, Spain historic city center from across the Tagus River

I was supposed to see this symphony a year ago. I had snagged early on my coveted pair of tickets for the DSO’s performance of Mahler’s 2^nd Symphony, Resurrection, at the end of its 2009-2010 season. I spent a good portion of that spring awaiting what would be a sonic epic that would combine orchestra and voice (many of them) to paint Mahler’s profound views of life, death, and beyond, perhaps not without certain key references to the Passion. I was going to experience catharsis and illumination on a level that might have been divine.

Instead I spent that weekend on the forward deck of the Carnival Ecstasy, happy to be with family, but continually amused at the strange twists of fate that led to me voyaging to exotic Caw-zuh-mel, Mecksikoh, surrounded by what could best described as the space liner from Wall-E without the merciful Pixar gloss and the Disney guarantee that people who looked like they ate other people would remain reasonably clothed. People boarded as passengers and left as cargo. 

 

Past misanthropy aside, I was electrified at the chance to see Mahler’s Resurrection symphony live in London as part of the BBC Proms. The BBC Proms is the world’s largest classical musical festival and consists of concerts by the world’s best soloists, chamber groups, choirs, and orchestras over two months from July through September. In fact, it’s still going on right now. Normally, most seats are expensive and sell quickly. For BBC Prom 29, Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela were performing. They premiered to incredible popular and critical acclaim in 2007. Just watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZbJOE9zNjw They’re a youth conductor and youth orchestra. Yes, no one in that video nor anyone who performed on August 5^th was over the age of 30. I’ll let that sink in.

 

The seats for BBC Prom 29, featuring that orchestra performing Mahler’s Resurrection, sold out in three hours. But for every concert, especially the popular ones, there are roughly 500 tickets for the arena floor that sold the day of the concert for 5 pounds. Yes, 5 pounds. So what do you have to do get one? Just wait in line outside of Royal Albert Hall the day of the concert like I did.

The queue stretched down to the end of the street, turned and kept on stretching, stretched some more, and eventually some thousand people later, looped back to Royal Albert Hall.

I got in line at around noon, resigning to the reality that I would get no sight-seeing done for the day and that a return to London early before heading stateside would be necessary. I brought lunch, water, and a book. We were given numbers at around 2:00 so that we could have up to a half hour to leave the line and get food, take breaks, or just wander and smirk at those behind us in line. Because Royal Albert Hall is across from the Royal College of Music, I was treated to a rehearsal by a brass ensemble class that used a classroom with open windows. I also spent a good part of the afternoon (the one afternoon where London was actually sunny/hot; lucky me) thinking about life, perhaps the best way to preface a performance of something like Mahler.

At around 5:30, I saw another queue form to the confusion to nearly everyone in line.  

 

Turns out it was just the queue for the preconcert lecture. Naturally it was full of the older and wealthier patrons who managed to get actual seats during that lucky three hour window during which I was likely still asleep in Texas. 

Finally, at 7:00, I had my ticket. From the moment of entering the arena floor onward, I really can’t describe any actual emotions other than, “Woah, this is really happening.” Royal Albert Hall itself is just as gorgeous on the inside as on the outside. Like many others with me, I took off my shoes and kept them off as we stood for the entire two hour performance.

The performance itself? It was as grand, dramatic, intense, beautiful, and divine as you’d expect from a composition of its scope, if another were to exist. I have a hard time reviewing it, despite having heard it three times, because it’s a piece to evaluated based on an individual’s spiritual reaction to it, not just the technical skill. Just start here and make your own judgments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi7kb4U7VsE&feature=related It’s worth your time, especially when you’re at the last movement and reading the lyrics, which can have profound personal import. Just watch it. Trust me.

My only qualms would be about the acoustics of the Hall. The choral work and the off-stage brass/percussion resonated with clarity and wonderful color. When the entire 500+ person ensemble of mega-orchestra (3 sets of timpani, anyone?), full choir, off-stage corps, organ, and voice soloists played loudly in unison, the Hall worked magnificently, allowing each timbre to come through despite the massive volume. Yet during passages of lower dynamics, the group sounded a bit watery and muddled, a fault I attribute to my location on the arena floor and not the playing itself. Still, it made me miss the Meyerson’s modern and peerless acoustics. 

When Dudamel ended the final climax, we treated them to the longest and loudest standing ovation (okay, 500 of us were already standing) I’ve ever participated in, a good 20 minutes.

There was a great sense of camaraderie among us in the arena. Everyone was willing to take photos for each other (including the one of me at the top) and unlike most DSO concerts I’ve been to, strangers freely talked about the performance. In a way, perhaps, the concert made us better people for a time. Here’s hoping this isn’t the last time I go to a Proms concert, but I’ll definitely try to snag tickets next time to avoid the fun (but maybe once-only) adventure of waiting seven hours in line. 

Martin Whooshing from the arena floor of the Royal Albert Hall after BBC Prom 29

Final Thoughts on Paris – Philip’s Summer of Adventure

After nearly twelve weeks in Paris, it is hard to believe that my stay here is almost over. In all, I have had a great experience, full of excitement, adventure, and free of any major mishaps. I have spent a lot of time traveling in the second half of this summer (4 out of the last 6 weekends) and have had the chance to see what Europe is really like beyond Paris. 

At the end of June, I spent a weekend in Rome, which is barely enough time to being exploring the wealth of history that is there. In my day and a half that I was actually in the city (due to some unfortunate delays in getting there), I had to rush around to see Vatican City Saturday afternoon and the ancient part of the city on Sunday. 

Rome

 

A couple weeks later, I found myself in London in the company of my good friends Josh, Sachin, and Camden. One comfort in this was being back in a country where I could completely understand the language (my understanding of French has improved this summer, but I am nowhere near fluent). After spending most of Saturday in the British Museum, we attended a midnight showing of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe, standing as “groundlings” in the yard.

The following work week was short, as July 14 was Bastille Day. For the French, this entails a huge festival with celebrations spread out all around Paris (and the rest of the country). Trying to experience as much as possible, I went to an annual military parade on the Champs-Élysées  in the morning, part of a concert on the Champ de Mars (the park by the Eiffel Tower), and ended the day watching fireworks from the banks of the Seine. 

Tour de France

Bastille Day Celebrations

Bastille Day Fireworks

That weekend I jumped on a train again to travel to Caen, in the Normandy region. My main motivation for this trip was to visit the Caen Memorial, a World War II museum focusing on the impact of the war in France. My ticket included a bus trip to visit some important D-day sites along the coast. Under gray, rainy skies (similar, we were told, to what the D-day troops were fighting in), we drove out to Pointe du Hoc to see bunkers and pillboxes built by the Germans as part of the Atlantic Wall to protect against attack from Britain. The landscape was covered in huge craters left by the extensive bombing carried out in the days prior to the landing. From here, we visited Omaha Beach, which has unfortunately been built up so there are houses along the road.  However, we were able to better understand the obstacles that this operation faced, as our guide pointed out the German bunkers built into the bluffs making them difficult to see and attack. Additionally, we visited an American cemetery where thousands of soldiers were buried (and this was U.S. soil, so I was technically back in the U.S. for about an hour) and Arromanches, where we could see the remains of an artificial harbor built by the British to bring supplies to the Allied troops until one of the real harbors along the coast could be captured.

Caen Memorial

My second day in Caen was cut short by the rain. In the morning I walked to some of the older historic sites in the city, including the remains of a castle that was built by William the Conqueror and expanded by his successors. However, by the early afternoon, it was raining too much and I had to pass the rest of my time at the train station.

The weekend after that I spent in Paris as a last chance to see anything I had missed and because the Tour de France finished that weekend. On Sunday, I again trekked over to the Champs-Élysées, where the Tour de France riders make several loops to finish out the race. I was able to find a spot right next to the road, so I had a really good view of the riders as they sped by. 

My final trip was to Avignon this past weekend to see a little bit of southern France.  In contrast to the weather in Normandy, it was sunny and warm in Avignon – perfect weather to walk around and be outside in. Aside from the Palais des Papes, built in the 14^th century when the Papacy was run out of Rome, I had no planned activities, leaving me free to explore. 

Avignon Palais des Papes

Of course, in the time between all of my travels, I have been continuing my research.  This is proceeding at an almost frantic pace as my departure quickly approaches. After some analysis of data we took at the beginning of the summer, we have had new samples prepared and only recently been able to start doing our experiments on them. Added to this is the construction at the university, preventing us from being able to take any data during the day and forcing us to work during the evenings instead. Despite the odd hours I am now working, I am excited to see the results and hopeful that these last couple days of experiments will be a success. 

Overall, this summer was exciting and eye-opening. I have been able to see and experience the differences in lifestyle between France and the U.S. While I may not be able to do all of the experiments I had hoped to finish before leaving Paris, I have learned a lot from my research. Additionally, my opportunity to travel provided me with time to relax and enjoy the history and culture of Europe.

"I came to Oxford and now all I do is sit in my room and study all day," say Sachin and Josh

Whoosh from the cloisters of New College, where Sachin and Josh are members. (You may recognize it as the place Mad-Eye Moody turned Malfoy into a ferret in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.)

It’s been almost a month now since Sachin and I left our friends at beautiful Brunnenburg Castle and made our way from the Italian Alps to the green pastures of Oxford University. After a couple of days of thunderstorms, missed trains, and general difficulties, we found our respective tiny, shabby flats in the heart of the city. The weather was chilly and grey. We had a week to explore the campus, check out the town, get inducted into our College (sort of like a House at Hogwarts), and get ready for class to start.

It didn’t take us long to find out that there are really two Oxfords. There is the Oxford thousands of tourists see every day – cramped, crowded, old, and dreary. It is an Oxford of fast food and souvenir shops, with nothing real to see but the antique stone walls of closed colleges and libraries. The other Oxford, however, is a different thing entirely. When you become a member of a College here, you enter a world of absurdly idyllic, peaceful, walled off courtyards and gardens, of hidden, back-alley pubs and local bookstores. The college we belong to, the New College of St. Mary, or just New College, is actually one of the oldest colleges here, founded in 1379. It was used as a filming location for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Tomorrow Never Dies. Parts of our Chapel were copied for use in Canterbury Cathedral. A segment of the original city wall, over a thousand years old, runs through our campus, and has been maintained by New College in perfect order for over seven centuries.

The first few days at Oxford were great. They were full of exploration, excitement, good food, and new friends. Then, in a catastrophic turn of events, classes started.

Sachin came here to study the economics of healthcare, and I wanted to familiarize myself with English novels and poetry. What we knew, but didn’t quite understand yet, was that Oxford courses are different from courses at American universities. Oxford is built upon the idea of the tutorial – an intense one-on-one co-exploration of a subject by a student and a professor. It isn’t a class so much as a collaboration. Sachin and I both came out of our first meeting with our professors amazed by two things. First, we were astounded by the expertise of our tutors. They are unbelievably knowledgeable – true leaders in their fields. The second thing that amazed us was the sheer amount of work we had gotten ourselves into!

I am reading over a thousand pages a week of literary works and their relevant criticisms. Sachin, in addition to his tutorial, has been tossed into a more traditional class his professor was already teaching on public economics. We now spend the vast majority of our time reading, writing, and talking to our tutors. Sachin and I try and get together once a day or so for dinner or ice cream, just as a way to get up and move around for a while. We are neck-deep in the most difficult academic work we have ever attempted. We have never covered so much complex information, in such detail, in so little time. But we have learned an incredible amount.

Sachin has written on theoretical reasons for redistribution of wealth and why charity doesn't work. He’s written on smoking as an economic externality and how smokers may actually, quite perversely, help society by dying earlier and not taking pension benefits. And he’s currently in the process of writing about the US healthcare system. He is studying the theory behind how healthcare should be provided in an ideal community, comparing the US system to those of the UK and Canada and France and Norway, and examining the pros and cons of Obamacare. He and his tutor are putting together ideas on how healthcare in America can be improved.

I have written on Defoe’s precise use of nonstandard capitalization to develop narrative voice and regulate pace and tempo in his novels. I’ve written on the 18^th century literary debate between the ancients and the moderns – the “battle of the books” – and how Alexander Pope’s mock-epic poem The Dunciad can be read as a comment on the direction of literature in his age. And now I’m in the middle of examining the complex relationship between ideas of eloquence, knowledge, and evil in Milton’s Paradise Lost. All throughout my explorations, I am studying an overarching theme of density and pacing in British literature, and trying to tie it to ideas of the urban, the industrial, and the imperial.

It is difficult, as the four-inch-thick book I must continue reading after I finish this post stares at me from my desktop, to truly say that we are having a fun time here. Particularly after we spent last month living in a castle and having tea with a Princess. Here, we barely see the light of day. We live on Nando’s chicken and Kinder chocolate. Our academics are our lives. So it is hard to say we are having fun. But we will both say that this is an incredible experience, and we wouldn’t trade it for the world.