Symphony

Two tickets to the performance of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra at the Ruby Diamond auditorium in Tallahassee last weekend was a gift. Otherwise, I confess I probably would not have gone. The newly refurbished auditorium now glitters with ornate trim. It is what people see, and what they talk about. Appearances don’t impress me.

The season ticket holders are given parking spaces in a lot across the street, while the rest park in the lot at the foot of the hill. It was raining hard when we arrived and my arthritic knees and ankles cried out with every step. By the time we reached the front door I glanced at the steep granite steps and began to grumble under my breath. No sign signified an accessible entrance. One step at a time I climbed, grasping onto the railing and muttering under my breath. The crowd of soggy music aficionados behind me was growing impatient with my slow progress. Reaching the top and inside at last I faced another set of stairs, this one leading down to the lobby. These were marble stairs that had become slippery from wet shoes. I turned to see a woman sitting in a wheelchair shaking her head. I wondered how she had managed to get this far. She seemed frozen by the choices. There must have been an accessible entrance, I thought, just no way to figure out in the dark and pouring rain how to locate it.

My post-menopausal testosterone load got the better of me. I felt enraged and indignant. I wanted to shout at who ever would listen that music should always be accessible.

It has been years since I attended a symphony concert. It is hard to compete with the experience of the symphony I had as a child. Mom would pack a picnic basket, Dad would drive a car-load of children from the neighborhood and off we would go to Tanglewood for the Saturday rehearsal. The woodwinds harmonized with the notes of the thrushes and sparrows. If we children tired of sitting on the blanket we could wander the lawn while listening to Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, or Mahler. People, who found the sunlight too strong or the grass too difficult to navigate, took shelter under the umbrella roof. It was magical and it felt to me that the trees were singing to the clouds.

The music of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra had a magic of its own too. As the musicians simultaneously hit each note with precision and passion, I was overcome. In the third section of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 I was actually sniffling back tears as the piano and the cello entered into a tender dialog.

If only we humans could be as good at listening to each other and responding.