The Thing About Fluting in a Cathedral

Fluting in a Cathedral

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The Thing About Fluting in a Cathedral

Fluting in a Cathedral

The thing about playing in a cathedral is that the room has opinions.

Several seconds of reverb means your notes don’t disappear — they linger, blur at the edges, blend into something larger than what you played. Up close, every detail is exposed. Farther back, the phrases wash together warmly. Think of it as make-up for music: it forgives small sins and flatters everything else.

Last weekend at the Altenberger Cathedral, the hall was full from front to back. I was right against the first pew — exposed, every breath audible. The people at the back were getting the warm, blended version. Both, it seems, worked: the audience rose at the end, and the applause came rolling all the way from the back of the nave.

There was one acoustic wrinkle worth mentioning. The winds were seated under a different arch from the strings — technically behind them as usual, but sounding for all the world like they were playing from another room entirely. I could hear them, but only distantly, like a conversation through a wall.

I’d written my own cadenzas for this concerto, and with no tempo to lock onto, I could stretch the phrases, sit inside the long reverb, and play with a kind of drama that’s simply not available when you’re counting bars alongside thirty other musicians.

The hall filled. The applause at the end came enthusiastically from all the way to the back. The room, it seems, had done its job.

Mozart G Major Flute Concerto

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A story from elsewhere

Once, years ago, I played this same concerto in Bombay. The scheduled flutist dropped out; I stepped in. What I hadn’t fully appreciated until we were in the room: India has a deep and sophisticated string tradition. Sitars, sarods, tamburas, violins — all beloved, all well-maintained. The western flute, with its intricate key mechanism and its dependence on a specialist to service it, is a different proposition entirely. An Indian flute is a length of bamboo with six holes. Ours is a small machine.

The venue was air-conditioned and elegant. The string players were managing fairly well. The oboe and flute players were not. Their instruments, not adjusted for the climate and with no repair person in sight, simply wouldn’t cooperate.

We survived. The audience applauded. They called me back for a curtain call.

I didn’t take it.

In the hall next door, some of India’s finest musicians were playing that same evening. I had one window to get in. So instead of walking back onstage for a second bow, I slipped out the side — still in concert dress — and spent the next hour listening to people who were specialists on their instruments.

No regrets.

The concert in the cathedral last weekend was really an exceptional event. It had great programming and even standing ovations! But that night in Bombay, the better music was next door.

It’s about going where the music is.