Life-changing

Every day, there are multiple concerts around the world.

More often than not, there’s more than one in each city or town.

Musicians prepare for it for days, months, sometimes years.

The audience is varied, including people from different ages and professions but with at least one interest in common: music.

Some go to be entertained.

Some were gifted a ticket and don’t really know what they’re doing there.

Some don’t find anything better to do than night.

But some…

…some go because they know a concert can be a life-changing experience.

During my lifetime, I´ve assisted to hundreds of concerts as a spectator. Most of them I´ve enjoyed. A few of them I´ve completely forgotten about.

But a handful of them, maybe 3 or 4, have changed me. They have become not only an important part of my memory, but also of my identity.

The first truly impactful concert I ever saw was a piano recital. I was 19 years old, I was already living and studying abroad, in Finland to be exact.

The pianist was a famous, celebrated Russian pianist named Grigory Sokolov.

I cannot express with words what I felt that night. And not only me, the whole audience seemed to be in ecstasy.

I didn´t know a piano could sound like that. I didn’t know that art could be that profound. It opened up a new layer of appreciation and understanding in me that I assure you has accompanied and assisted me in my artistic journey. So much that even now, more than 20 years later, its effect hasn’t diminished in the least bit. Perhaps it has just grown bigger.

I truly hope you will have or already have had the opportunity to witness such an experience. From Sokolov or from anyone else, in any genre and style of music.

In honor of this magnificence, I’d like to share a video of Sokolov playing one of the most beuaitul works of music ever: Rachmaninoff´s Second Piano Concerto, in an older, much-celebrated video of him performing coincidentally also in Finland with the Finnish Radio Orchestra and the fabulous Finnish conductor Juha Pekka Saraste. I´ve seen this video so many times, and it’s probably as impactful as that concert was for me.

Click here to watch.

Enjoy, and have a great day.

Claudio.

P.D. Other impactful potentially life-changing concerts that I´ve listened to have been from Janine Janssen, Chick Corea, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Maurizio Pollini. Oh if I only would’ve had the opportunity to listen to Rubinstein, Piazzolla, or Bill Evans… I would give almost anything for that.