Like the faint sound of thunder, rumbling in the distance, then gathering in volume
until, with a great roar, it all comes crashing down, an avalanche of Europe’s concert halls,
like the 7.4 cubic kilometre chunk of the Jakobshavn glacier, calving into the sea below:
the red and Alaska yellow cedar stages and smoked birch parquet floors, a reverberating crack,
splintering on the rocks below, seals clapping, barking CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM:
the balconies and loggias, walls panelled in vertical grain, plaster and gypsum board,
cherry wood acoustic panels, the Cologne Gürzenich, the Festspielhaus and Mozarteum,
the Teatro della Pergola, the Graf-Zeppelin-Haus, the Grosser Musikvereinssaal,
crashing and splintering on the rocks below, then sliding into the sea;
the gilt of the Palais Garnier with its Chagall ceiling, the staircases of the Staatsoper,
the neo-classical façades and baroque rotundas, the Mariinsky, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu
splintering on the rocks below and crashing into the sea. CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM, they bark.
A further rumbling and here they come, a second avalanche of chamber ensembles and string quartets:
There’s Suk, Dvořák’s son-in-law,
arms and legs akimbo, bow in his right hand, Strad in his left,
like the ‘falling man’ of the Twin Towers,
in what seems like slow-motion,
falling into the maw of nothingness: the dichroistic flames of the violin
turning from gold to dark red as he falls
into echoless space. And on his heels:
Oistrakh, then Marsick and Carl Flesch,
the old Euro-Men in their monkey suits
and high, starched collars,
the fistula of a rotten, paternalistic culture, ‘an old bitch gone in the teeth’,
burst and spewing pus:
plates ribs necks and scrolls,
a rain of spruce bellies, maple backs
black-dyed pear purls, white poplar sandwiched between,
the fittings, pegs, tail pieces,
ebony, rosewood, Oregon mahogany,
seasoned for ten years.
HERE COMES EVERYBODY:
the Lerner, Pro Arte, Budapest and Busch,
the Ysaÿe, the Kolisch, Prague and Bohemian:
Auer, Yankelevich, Yampolsky,
snow on the Neva, the clank of steam pipes in the recital hall
(spare me, please, this sentimental tosh),
stifling, bombastic, hothouse scum,
temperamental, over-rehearsed neurotics,
lackeys, degenerates, playthings of the haut bourgeois …
Mao would have known what to do with them …
CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM, they bark
besides themselves, raucous with bloody-eyed glee …
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