Courage – guts, as we often call it – can make people tough to aggressive. Sensitivity sometimes becomes soft, spongy, yielding. When courage and sensitivity combine they present a formidable yet loving mixture. It is, perhaps, the best of all concoctions for handling humanity. To be sure, it is the most engaging combination for appreciating the arts. Courageous, sensitive artists delight beyond the media they engage, way into the realms of soul touching, creative as if in the hands of a creator.
Ingrid Fliter presented us with a shining example of this when she played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor on 26th October 2024. Coping with the exigencies of the acoustics in the Victoria Concert Hall and the distraction of a loose string on (I think) the top E, she displayed the determination of a Dragon and the gentleness of a Gadwall. For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime performance. For Ingrid, I suspect, it was her aspirational normal.
Ingrid’s playing reminds me of Dame Myra Hess during WWII. Myra Hess’s Sunday evening broadcasts brought a feather to the rasp of war while instilling a resilience to face the coming week. Perhaps the influence was then so dramatic because I was a child. If so, I must still be one. Ingrid’s playing had the same effect on me. I felt it, too, when I shook her hand after the concert. It’s a different kind of war today but no less threatening. It’s a different kind of courage but no less enduring.
Hans Graf conducts the SSO musicians with a similar confidence and it sounds like the two of them work together in a feisty but committed way that cannot fail to bring out the very best. Not being a professional music critic I cannot offer views about how Ms Fliter may progress. If, as I suspect, she has faced some tough decisions in her career I only hope the challenges will continue so that her strength of both character and technique can go on being more than a match for them. There is every reason to believe it will.
Many SSO concerts play again in the mind long after they are over.
Ingrid Fliter’s loving Beethoven will be there for as long as the mind is.
Possibly longer, who knows.
Good morning
John Bittleston
All blessings to Ingrid Fliter, and those braving today’s War of Appreciation.
29 October 2024
