Emperor

I'm supposed to be studying for my Russian test tomorrow, but I've made the mistake of playing Beethoven's "Emperor" Piano Concerto on my iTunes. I usually try to avoid playing classical music while I'm working because I get caught up in it and end up dancing around or lying on my bed or just staring into space.

A more serious impediment to my productivity is when I play a piece that carries some emotional weight or baggage. A piece that I've performed before will stop me from doing just about anything else as I listen. There are a few pieces that I haven't played but have a similar impact, the Emperor Concerto among them. Though apparently I can still write.

Each piece takes me back to a time and place that maybe I haven't been in for a long while, maybe a time and place that I miss, that I loved. A place in which I did not expect to find myself here and now. Invariably, when I hear a piece for the first time in a long while, I realize how I've changed, or been changed, irreversibly. So much is different in my life, my mind, my perspective since I performed Sibelius' Second Symphony the summer after my freshman year of high school, since Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky in my senior year of high school, since I listened to the Emporor Concerto in October of 2007. Freshman fall.

How can a piece of music do this to me? All of my goals and priorities, for the next 24 hours and 24 months, melt away as I swim around in my feelings. I want to curl up on my bed and let everything that has happened wash over me endlessly. This stately, sublime, heart-wrenching work of Beethoven leaves me in its wake helpless, exhausted, and insignificant. I float towards hot summer nights on the lawn at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, listening to the symphony under a blanket with six soulmates. For the first time in my life, I listened to the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. An experience that changed my life irreversibly and a memory that will stay with me forever.