The impact of the unexpected: Elisabeth Brauss

I've seen a lot of really good classical concerts recently. Marc-André Hamelin playing Gershwin's Rhapsody Blue with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra was as good as you'd expect it to be. Shostakovich's 8th symphony with the same orchestra was excellent too.

Last Wednesday I saw a pianist I'd never heard of before playing at a half-full Salle Bourgie. I don't know why my wife bought the tickets, and she couldn't really remember either, but it seemed like a pleasant way of spending a Wednesday evening. Elisabeth Brauss was young, twenty-nine according to the notes, but she looked much younger. The program included works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev. She came out on stage, all smiles, paused for a moment and began to play.

Holy crap.

There was a palpable moment in the hall when everyone came to the same realisation - something special is happening here. Her playing was mesmerising, a scarcely believable combination of energy, lyricism, and precision, with each of those attributes turned up to maximum. And unlike some other artists I've seen recently, the pianist herself seemed to be enjoying every moment of the performance. The audience was so caught up in it that they stopped coughing (!) and the silence between each movement was total, charged with anticipation, almost radioactive. Montreal audiences are always pretty generous with their standing ovations, but the enthusiasm in this one was off the scale. It was the concert of the season for me.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Elisabeth Brauss in concert again, but next time I'll have expectations. This was an one off, the sort of thing that can only happen in a live performance where you have no preconceptions of what you're about to see. 

Anyway, you had to be there I guess. But thanks to a user on BlueSky, I found this video of her playing the same program at the Gilmore festival, just three days before her concert in Montreal. It's an exceptionally good video with close-ups of her hands. For example, see her playing of the Beethoven Sonata that begins at 27'15", so lyrical and so moving, followed by the explosion of energy as she moves into the second movement at 31'20".

Skye Consort with Emma Björling at Le Rucher Boltonnois

I love folk music, especially the traditional music that's rooted in the places where I've lived: Ireland, Sweden, and Quebec. So, when Martine described the band that was playing in the town next to our chalet, well, we just had to be there.

Emma Björling is a folk singer from Östersund and, amongst many other projects, she performs with the Montreal-based folk group Skye Consort. The venue was Le Rucher Boltonnois, a cosy little hall serving craft beers that we've visited four or five times now. They played a variety of songs from each of their traditions, singing in Swedish, French, and English (with some spicy Norwegian and Danish for good measure). They call their genre 'transatlantic chamber folk', a genre with only one member. Their performance was outstanding.

Each of the musicians is a virtuoso of their instrument. Simon Alexandre, also a classical violinist in the Orchestre Philharmonique de Quebec, played a nyckelharpa, a medieval Swedish instrument somewhat like a violin with keys. I'd heard it before on recordings but never live. The harmonic resonances it produced were just gorgeous.

Although she could sing in French, Björling apologised between songs saying that she couldn't really speak in French. But, she said, speaking in English was a fair compromise as we couldn't understand her Swedish songs. I was about to put my hand up to say there was at least one audience member who appreciated her Swedish - but quickly thought better of it!

The band has two albums and lots of performances available on YouTube. Here's the Swedish song that began their concert last Saturday evening.

2024 Reading List

2024 was a good reading year. I suspect 2025 will be even better, as I'll be diving into fiction to avoid reading any news about you-know-who.

Highlights of my 2024 reading year include:

 

• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, his first novel, which I read on the basis of a review in The Guardian. The idea is brilliant, a story of a war in ancient Greece made real and relevant by the present tense narration of two characters with funny Dublin accents. It's truly glorious from beginning to end. 
  
  
• The 19th century Russian short stories collected and analysed by George Saunders under the title A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. The stories are really good, but my appreciation of them was doubled by Saunders' explanations. This is such an enjoyable read, but also so insightful for an aspiring writer. 
  
  
• A memoir that was assigned in a writing craft class, Splinters by Leslie Jamison. It's fair to say that I wasn't looking forward to reading yet another divorce memoir, but Jamison's writing is sharp, insightful, and often extremely witty in an understated and subtle way, a pleasure to read.
  
  
• Orbital. It's wonderful, but everybody knows that already. 
  
  

I was a bit disappointed by Mike McCormack's This Plague of Souls. I was so looking forward to it as Solar Bones is one of my all-time favourite novels, but it didn't quite land for me. It felt unfinished. McCormack has said that these books are part of a triptych, with Solar Bones as the centre-piece, so maybe this will all come together in the end when the third novel is published.

I was quite underwhelmed by Sally Rooney's Normal People, just as I was underwhelmed in the past by Beautiful World, Where Are You. I'm ready to accept it's my fault, not Rooney's, but I've given it a good go now so Intermezzo is not in my plans.

Here's the complete list of what I read in 2024:

Fiction

Amis, Martin: The Zone of Interest

Arikha, Alba: Two Hours

Barry, Kevin: That Old Country Music

Boyne, John: Water

Cusk, Rachel: Transit (2nd reading)

Dutton, John B: 2084

Ephron, Nora: Heartburn

Ferrell Carolyn: Dear Miss Metropolitan

Fosse, Jon: A Shining

Harvey, Samantha: Orbital

Keegan, Claire: Foster (2nd reading)

Lennon, Ferdia: Glorious Exploits

McCann, Colum: Thirteen Ways of Looking

McCormack, Mike: Solar Bones (3rd reading)

McCormack, Mike: This Plague of Souls

McLiam Wilson, Robert: Eureka Street

Mitchell, David: Slade House

Murray, Paul: The Bee Sting

Richler, Mordecai: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Rooney, Sally: Normal People

Saunders, George (editor): A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - stories by Chekov, Tolstoy et al

Thúy, Kim: Ru (en Français)

Non-fiction

Balinska, Maria: The Bagel

Cohen, Richard: How to Write like Tolstoy

Dyer, Geoff: The Last Days of Roger Federer

Ho Davies, Peter: The Art of Revision - The Last Word

Jamison, Leslie: Splinters

Olen Butler, Robert: From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

Poetry

Mandelstam, Osip: Stolen Air

Pinsky, Robert: Proverbs of Limbo

Roeser, Dana: All Transparent Things Need Thundershirts