Bartholomew sat in the bottom right, four rows back from the stage, the glaring lights spilling far enough back to frame the faces of his family sitting around him. Up and around were thousands of seats, all dressed in a pleasant dark-red suede, stretching in their delicate rows further back than he’d care to know. Many hidden little faces, listening intently, sat silently in them, no doubt with the same strained expressions of feigned concentration and understanding he noticed in those close and visible, and that were proving so distracting and disappointing.
The soloist, a fine violinist of high repute, was launching herself headfirst into Shostakovich’s first Violin Concerto, the piece Bartholomew had come to the hall especially to hear. He wasn’t of the able sort these days; it took the help of his entire family to navigate him from the steps of his townhouse, out into his eldest daughter’s car and down the short road to the Concert Hall. The hardest bit of the whole journey though was walking through the main lobby, as people charged about ordering their interval drinks (or getting in a sly one before the performance) and rushing for a last minute toilet stop before making their way hurriedly to their seat. He found it hard enough keeping his balance with the dizzying movements around him, without the occasional knock and bump from an inconsiderate patron or four.
As Bartholomew sat, aware of a profound fatigue resting over him, the soloist reached the cadenza in the final movement. She was swaying around on the spot with such stressed and jagged movements that it seemed obvious to him that she thought her very life was in danger, if not from the sheer violence of her phrases then because a slight relaxation in this crucial moment would spoil the acerbity of her spell. Absent though, to him atleast, was the real and present danger in each note as Shostakovich had placed them on the stave. He couldn’t hear any deference to the composer’s plight, or even an acknowledgement of restraint and respect for the struggle he had endured. It wasn’t a performance of glorification as such, but it seemed disconnected, oddly hollow, perhaps not dryly mechanical enough for its meaning to resonate in the sonorities correctly. Anyway, he had stopped really listening a long time ago. All he was registering now was the constipated dance of orchestra, soloist and conductor as they neared the closing chords of the piece; sharp stabs from the strings, furrowed foreheads and strained cheeks from the brass. Everywhere on that stage was a demonstration of force, a tug of war, a ballet of stomping and kicking. It was a fight. For what exactly, Bartholomew would like to have known. To him, it was all showmanship - an act. He was witnessing actors in a drama so full of style, yet haemorrhaging its substance through each crescendo and tremor of lucid vibrato that this violinist was so celebrated for. Nowhere could he see the real meaning of the music; not in the eyes of the clarinets, not in the dance of the conductor’s hands, not in the rough tides of the Strings’ bows. It was empty to him.
The piece had barely finished before the roars of appreciation flooded the hall. A respectful pause of silence at the end - the right response to a performance, no matter how honest - was lost to these screaming thugs, thought Bartholomew. He had only gotten his hands halfway towards each other before his arms were assaulted by his daughters either side of him, rising to their feet in such a hurry that both his elbows were knocked in completely different directions, leading to an abortion of a clap. Now, Bartholomew would often allow himself a little indulgence in pride when thinking of his daughters; both were successful musicians themselves, the younger a flautist and the elder a now retired principal French Horn player with the orchestra playing that evening. He thought his daughters to be quite intelligent women. He had raised them so. Yet here they were, members of this discourteous crowd, with consideration only for that extremely well-lit idol on the stage, who’d just finished serenading them into a riot. He was appalled.
When he finally got his hands together, to show some small appreciation for the efforts of the performers under those burning stage lights, he realised that they were no longer visible. A shadow had fallen over him. He was the only one left sitting down. Even the corpulent couple directly in front of him had managed to pull themselves out of their seats, to join the rest of the row, and the rows in front and behind. Bartholomew turned his head slightly to the left, just as a collective cheer from the young ‘gentlemen’ directly behind him suffocated his ears. Shaken and surprised, he forgot what he was turning his head for, and then promptly forgot that he had forgotten that. He found himself completely immersed by the cacophony around him. The applause was so strong and overwhelming. With each roar he felt a shiver surging down his body like a deadening shock. Every clap hit his skin and rippled down to his bone, its violent shimmering growing to a thunder deep within him. His eyes were now no longer open, and a numbness began to drip from his nose.
His younger daughter to the right of him turned briefly to shout - “Why aren’t you standing up?” – but she was too spellbound by the collective rapture to notice that he wasn’t even clapping, or even consider that this frail old man would have needed help in any case. How wonderful it was, she thought, that the several thousand people in this hall had all felt so moved by the performance that they had joined together in such a comprehensive approval of shouts and whoops. Rows upon rows (upon rows) of delighted patrons with smiles as wide as their midriffs. It was something to behold, and something to be part of.
Bartholomew had heard his daughter’s question through the din. He tried to answer, to explain the emptiness of it all, but his lips wouldn’t open. He didn’t notice though; in that same moment the overwhelming emptiness had rushed with such power around the landscape of his mind that he simply could not focus on his inability to communicate. His lips became the horizon; the unspoken words a gaseous serpent spiralling around, strangling his spine and throat. Above him he saw thunderous clouds of dark irony, and could feel the smattering of the claps against his skull, and the roars of the crowd singe his singular strands of sinewy grey hair, and watched as this cascade of sonic violence shifted into a torrent of emptiness, bleeding through the barrier between outer and inner self, and stood there as everything around him was washed away.
And then, finally, there was silence.