Comment - 12 musical epiphanies

The recent audition of Wagner's Parsifal brought to mind one of the strongest musical experiences I ever had. I was 22, studying agricultural engineering and immersed in an exam period. A professor had given me reason to believe that I had flunked his exam (which I didn't). I returned home angry but also dispirited. So rather than to start studying for next day's exam, I threw my briefcase in a corner, switched on the hifi and started to listen to the Parsifal. Eventually I sat through the full four hours of the whole opera, completely oblivious of the passing time. It must have been late afternoon when I returned, fully refreshed and poised, to my desk to study for next day's examination. Which went absolutely fine. It was a strange episode. A replenishing hole in time.

I' ve been thinking about other epiphanies that have punctured my musical journey and I get to 12 decisive experiences.

1. Around 1982: the foundational epiphany. A sequence in a movie starring Louis de Funès (La Grande Vadrouille). There is a sequence in which he plays a conductor rehearsing the Hungarian March, from Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust. It struck me like a bolt from the blue. Hardly slept that night. And next day I dashed to the library to borrow several LPs to start my musical explorations. It still amazes how suddenly this grabbed me. I had been listening to classical music before that time, even owned one single LP (Beethoven's Eroica) which I played again and again (stopping halfway the finale because I found it sounding too loud). But it was De Funès who really kicked off this lifelong passion.
2. 1983: Mahler's Third in the Kerstmatinee performance by Bernard Haitink. Epic, mysterious, larger than life. Unforgettable.
3. Around 1984: discovery of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony in Karajan's interpretation. Until then I had not heard anything as uncompromisingly bleak and black as that music. I was very receptive to this kind of very gloomy music at that time. It still is one of my favourite pieces.
4. Around 1985: a visit on my own to the Staatsoper in Vienna. Standing places. Puccini's Turandot. I went away intoxicated, really out of this world. I still have vivid memories of this evening.
5. Around 1986: a live performance of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic under the late Ernest Bour. A flawed performance - the trumpet solo could not hold the high A in the first movement's dissonant climax - but of suffocating intensity nevertheless.
6. 1987: the Parsifal session described above.
7. Around 1988: a live performance of Shostakovich's Fourth, again with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in a church in Mechelen. Don't even remember the conductor. It was a very young guy. I also remember attending a general rehearsal (I wrote programme notes for the orchestra in those days). But I have never heard a performance (of any music) of comparable savagery. This was pure evil on the loose. Midway the performance one of the lighting spots fell from the church's walls. It was a totally apt incident that reinforced the atmosphere of pure terror. 
8. Around 1993: a live performance of Bruckner's Symphony nr. 8 with the Münchener Philharmonic under Celibidache, in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. Close encounters of the third kind.  
9. 2003: Rudolf Buchbinder plays Beethoven's last three piano sonatas in the Vienna Konzerthaus. No breaks at all, not even between sonatas! We were sitting on the scene, facing the 2000 head audience, partaking in an extraordinary sense of communion. 
10. 2008: JD puts on an LP of Karajan's Beethoven Ninth. The rediscovery of vinyl was a delight that continues up to the present day. 
11. 2009: the discovery of ECM, mainly through their book 'Horizons Touched'. I wrote a review of that book here. 
12. 2010: The present blog, which opens up a deepened way of listening and large tracts of new repertoire.

To be sure, I have heard many more memorable concerts. But these are experiences that are touchstones in my musical experience. I continue to return to them, as reference points. So what does this learn me?

• That the symphonic repertoire for me is at the heart of the musical experience.
• That recorded music is unlikely to be a substitute for live concerts - with their palpable atmosphere, the energy of thousands of people hanging in the room, the sense of occasion, the strong visual cues.
• That in the early years - when I was at a more impressionable age and a lot was new - epiphanies were more frequent. Although the last three years seem to point towards a renewal.
• That more recent epiphanies have a bearing on a deepening experience, associated with a more subtle appreciation of sound (vinyl, the ECM sound).