Ticket and program
Most concerts have one moment that you hope could be captured and put in a bottle, where it could be retrieved and heard again whenever you wished. If you’re really fortunate, there may be two or three of these snatches of musical time. One recital that had more than I could count was Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s at the Ravinia Festival in 2004. It was indoors at the Martin Theatre, which is the only remaining building at Ravinia from when the festival opened. It’s an intimate space, with a gently rising seating area that allows for excellent vantage points from any of its 850 seats.
The recital was taped, and released on CD by Harmonia Mundi in February. In an obituary I wrote about Hunt Lieberson, I compared her performance of Handel’s La Lucrezia to the Nonesuch studio recording of the same piece. The live performance had more fire, I remembered, and it’s nice to hear the Ravinia recital recording and think that your inner ear remembered that correctly. It really was a memorable night, and I can still remember talking to friends at intermission about this spellbinding performance. She was that kind of performer, and it was that kind of performance, and now it can be shared with everyone who wasn’t there, and I think that’s the best, most noble part of the recording industry, this ability to hold on to moments that moved people in ways they’d rarely been moved before, and offer that up to even more people, and I’m deeply thankful I went up there, 25 miles outside the city I’d just moved to one month before, and I’m thankful I have this document on my shelves, where it can remind me of that night and give me back those moments in the time they happened that night in 2004, and I’m thankful that everyone can have them, too. I see ArkivMusic has it for $16.99. That’s a bargain.