Avery Fisher Hall – Lincoln Center
Bachiana Filarmônica SESI-SP
João Carlos Martins, music director and conductor
Vivaldi – Concerto for 4 violins in B minor, op. 3 no. 10
Violins: Elisa Fukuda, Claudio Micheletti, Ricardo Takahashi, Lucas Targino Farias
Bach – Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D major
Villa Lobos – Melodia Sentimental and Evocação – Jean William, tenor
O Trenzinho Caipira (Bachianas no.2)
Guerra-Peixe- Mourão
Matheus Araújo – Prelúdio, Fuga e Samba
 

When I arrived in the Lincoln Center Atrium, even before entering Avery Fisher Hall, I could sense this was not going to be an ordinary (what a bad choice of word! Nothing is ever ordinary at Lincoln Center!) concert evening. I was excited at the prospect of seeing and hearing my old friend João Carlos Martins again, it had been so long since our last encounter. João Carlos is as formidable a man as he is a musician. His life reads like a thriller, and I am anxious to see the movie that he told me was made about him.

So there I was, all spruced up for the occasion as this was not only for my own pleasure, but for business. I was accompanying a VIP, in a non Violetta da Gamba capacity, just wearing one of my other hats. As I was about to enter the hall, I heard a thunderous ovation and there was João Carlos, his formal shirt flying out of his pants, his white tie undone and slipping off his neck, his tails on his shoulder, assaulted by loving fans from the huge Brazilian community in NY. I joined them and found myself in a tight embrace as soon as he realized who I was. Dinner, he screamed as he was literally pushed inside, dinner after the concert! Ok, don’t worry, I wouldn’t miss that for anything in the world.

As I entered Avery Fisher Hall, I felt a knot in my throat. How long had it been since I last attended a concert here? 10, 20 years? I can’t believe this will be part of my weekly fare (at least) for the next few years. YABADABADOO! I walked slowly toward the hall doors. I wanted to get the feel again, look around at posters and announcements. This will once more become familiar. I won’t have to ask where the toilets are, I’ll know! A sip of white wine before the show is a must. Here I go, the nice bartender handing me my glass: “Enjoy your evening!”. Oh, how I love these perpetual good wishes, enjoy your evening, have a nice day, happy holidays, have a good time, good night, sleep tight – in NY you are surrounded by well-wishers, from doormen, to cabbies, to bartenders and waiters, to salespeople. You are perpetually being encouraged to make the most of your wonderful opportunities. And so I will.

I slowly make my way in, savoring every step. And, oh surprise, I’m back! As if I had never left. Aha, but that sounds like an awful cliché, and actually is ! I’m in fact very surprised. Well, you see, there is no forgetting that I have spent the last few years going in and out of the greatest concert halls in the world. And Avery Fisher’s architecture and layout are positively ancient compared to the last ones I’ve been to. The seating layout is completely outdated, in the vein of the Victoria Hall in Geneva or the Konzerthaus in Berlin. A large rectangular hall with the parquet seats occupying the whole middle lower level, and the balconies stuck around the walls, just one above the other, so that all balcony seats face the center of the room instead of the stage, making for strained necks and poor perspective. I had truly forgotten about this. And the stage itself is tamely situated at the front of the room, just an elevated end section, crushed against the back wall – what, no seats behind the orchestra?! Ah, wherefore art thee, Scharoun and Piano? Where are your splendid Philharmonie and Santa Cecilia, two halls where you cannot find a single bad seat. Where is the Sala São Paulo, as beautiful as it is functional and acoustically perfect. Where is the Sala Nezahualcoyotl, where you hear and see everything from every angle and nook? I might just write a concert hall geography one of these days, I’m becoming an expert.

So I walk in as if in a religious procession. I look around, expecting to see the familiar New York concert crowd. I won’t go into all that again, only I must remember to add a sociology of concertgoers to my geography of concert halls. Well, not this evening! No New York concert habitués. This is more like an escola de samba rehearsal. The audience is made up of members of the Brazilian community in New York, drawn by their hero and the music he announces. They will have to sit through Vivaldi and Bach to earn the right to hear Villa Lobos hits and especially a group of percussionists from the Escola de Samba Vai-Vai, from São Paulo, after the intermission.

What João Carlos Martins has done and is doing is truly admirable. No longer able to play the piano, after several ghastly problems, ill health and accidents, instead of giving up, he turned to conducting and founded the Bachiana Philharmonic, now part of a socio-cultural project run by SESI São Paulo. SESI stands for Serviço Social da Indústria, the social arm of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo. Much can be said about the many socio-cultural projects that are sprouting up in Brazil, but that is not my intention here.

I just want to register what happened before my eyes and into my ears, a truly revolutionary experience, and certainly never before seen in Avery Fisher Hall. The first part of the program was conventional enough, if you can say that about an orchestra made up of young talented musicians under the direction of a genius for the benefit of people who normally do not have access to good music. What was “conventional” was the programme, Vivaldi’s B minor concerto for four violins and Bach’s beloved Third Orchestral Suite in D major. The Vivaldi was well played, with an excellent first violin, Elisa Fukuda, and a twelve-year-old soloist, Lucas Targino Farias, a deserving protégé of the maestro. The orchestra was all there, albeit a little square. None but extremely well seasoned musicians can afford to wander off the trodden trail. Biondi, Harnoncourt, Jacobs and their groups of soloists can do that. Less proficient musicians should do what was done here, play earnestly and sensitively, without too much fantasy. Then came the Bach, which, like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Beethoven’s fifth (or any other, for that matter) symphony, is totally unforgiving. Whatever you do has to be sublime to keep the audience on edge. Otherwise, you catch yourself humming along as if accompanying Yankee Doodle. What happened with this performance was that the piece was often beyond the musicians’ sheer technical ability, and the result, in the faster movements, was quite a muddle with occasional but very obvious slips in intonation. The whole idea was, nevertheless, quite beautiful – João Carlos Martins is, after all, as familiar with Bach as one can be. His famous recording of the complete piano works is still state-of-the-art. A grouchy word about the annoying applause after each movement, to be expected from an audience totally unfamiliar with the repertoire and the ways of classical performance. Well, they can be totally forgiven, which is definitely not the case with the Roman audience which is often guilty of the same misdemeanor.

It was after the intermission that the hall caught fire. There was a first lovely spark with two songs performed by another of the maestro’s protégés, young Brazilian tenor Jean William. His voice is small but gorgeous and his phrasing is everything it should be, imaginative, sensitive, elegant. I would love to hear him sing Mozart (what a superb Don Ottavio he will make) and that should not be too far off as he is on his way to continue his studies at La Scala. Then came one of the most famous pieces in Brazilian repertoire, the Trenzinho Caipira (Little Country Train) from the Bachianas no.2, which never fails to get the audience swaying. And finally, the percussionists joined the orchestra in a piece by Matheus Araújo, inspired by all the famous Brazilian composers, classical and popular, and in a medley of fabulous encores, including variations on the Brazilian National Anthem. By that time, everyone in the packed hall was standing and dancing the samba, to the extent that I feared for the hall’s integrity. The audience shook and thumped to the infectious rhythm, and would absolutely not let go of their hero. The stagehands were heard to say this concert had made history at Lincoln Center. It will certainly remain in the minds and hearts of all those who were there, some very far from home, others who barely know where Brazil is – but who will have had a splendid musical introduction to its best qualities.