Razumovsky at Bethlehem

Author: Elizabeth Cook, Bethlehem Community Center

Yesterday my string quartet came to Bethlehem Community Center to play Razumovsky's 2nd string quartet for the children. As we were walking in, I looked at our first violinist, one of my best friends, and he had tears in his eyes. He said he was crying because the children were so sweet, eating their breakfast together. He doesn't get opportunities to be with children and he was really moved by the experience of being with them. It felt good to give him that chance, and I could tell that he, and the rest of my quartet, really enjoyed playing and talking about Beethoven with them. We played the opening passage of the slow movement and asked the children to close their eyes and imagine. When the children opened their eyes we asked what things came into their mind as we played. My heart was so warmed by their responses, about what beautiful things entered their little minds through Beethoven's genius: "flying kites", "friendship!", "sadness", "rainbows!"

It’s taken me years to realize what music means to me, why it makes me feel fulfilled, why it makes me feel alive. Why did I dedicate my life to music? Funny as it is, I actually understood why as I was watching an episode of Frasier. Niles and Frasier were complaining to their father about how they couldn't get tickets to a big symphony concert. Their father was skeptical of why they cared about classical music at all. Niles told his father something like they wanted to be transported to another world through a transcendental experience. What was supposed to be a joke about how nerdy Niles is actually clarified something for me. Music is transcendent, it lifts us out of reality and into a world of magic, passion, love, darkness, infinite possibilities of expression. I remember the exact moment when I feel in love with music. I saw a performance of Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei for solo cello and orchestra. My whole body and spirit filled with sadness and darkness as the opening theme played, a Jewish prayer for the dead, I was taken into some unknown world. My heart was aching like it was broken even though, at age 12, I'd never experienced that. After the concert, for weeks, I would lie on the sofa and put my mother’s famous Korean orange blanket, with a big embroidered picture of a girl on a swing on it, over my whole body. I'd close my eyes and I'd sing the melody of Kol Nidrei over and over again in my head, like an addict, and over and over again, I'd go back into that strange new world that made me feel sad, but I loved it. 

I believe that yesterday I was able to take those children, even if only for a few moments into another world filled with flying kites, friendship, sadness, and rainbows. This is exactly what every child deserves, the opportunity to be in a safe environment, where they are allowed to imagine, where they are given the chance to be exposed to the finest works of art, which I believe weren't just made for the upper class, but made for everyone.