When I found out that we were going to see Anne-Sophie Mutter at Carnegie Hall I was so excited. Bach’s works are one of my favorite classical pieces and I listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons probably at least once a week. So, this was certainly one of my favorite outings, since I was able to distinguish previous experience from actually visualizing it live. It’s one thing to see a digitalized image on a computer or listen to a song through headphones, and a completely different experience seeing, hearing, and getting lost in a performance that comes to life.

One particular detail that I paid attention to was the rhythm and motion of the musicians’ bodies. I find their facial and body expressions so empowering because I can sense the music possessing them. Certainly not choreographed, I found it fascinating that when the musicians play the same piece they end up moving in a similar fashion, as if this “dance” was pre-arranged. I also found that my favorite parts were those when everyone played together, rather than the attention being on a soloist. Having multiple varying notes, beats, rhythms, sounds and expressions coalesce with each other produced an image of a flashing storm of sounds for me, as if I were being overwhelmed and bombarded with multiple waves at once. The irony is that instead of hearing it as chaos, the different degrees of waves still manage to synchronize with each other at the same time, enlivening and heightening the senses.