Inspirational music comes in all shapes and sizes, colors and variations.  Last night I had the exquisite pleasure of seeing and hearing, what is for me, the best of it.  A friend won tickets to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and knowing that this noble orchestra is my absolute favorite in the world, invited me to tag along.

I was also the winner and tag along, I did.  Seats were in the Dress Circle, the primo place to sit, for me, because you can look down on the orchestra and see who’s playing what and how the sections work together.  It’s always a visual ballet as well because the movement of the bows alone is worth the price of admission.

Sometimes I would just squint my eyes and make the stage and its players a bit out of focus and it would become a modern moving painting of grace and design scored brilliantly by its composer.  By the time I left the concert I was walking three feet off the ground and emotionally spent, but inspired beyond my imagination.

I am still tingling from the experience as I sit and write some eight hours later.

What a gift!  To be able to sit in this great hall and hear the best play the best!  I knew I was in for a great evening and it absolutely topped my anticipation.  These words will n’er fulfill the experience, but I can’t help but to want to try and share it.  Anyone who loves music must treat themselves to this at least once in their life.  Otherwise, why live, if you cannot partake of the best of it?

First we were treated with an excerpt from Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, his overture to his opera written from the story of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This was a sparkling piece of fanfares and pomp which only served to set the table for the feast.

Next, closing the first act was the American premier of a new work composed by Scottish composer, James MacMillan, entitled Violin Concerto, with soloist Vadim Repin, a Russian dynamo who received a tremendous ovation when intermission arrived.  James MacMillan, himself, trotted out of the audience to join the gang and take a well-deserved bow along with orchestra, Repin and conductor, Charles Dutoit.

I’ve always loved the Philadelphia because they were so very rhythmic.  Here they proved their mettle tackling a wonderfully inventive modern composition reflecting, for me, the age of industry, of technology, of reach and confusion, and obtuse wonder.

Sometimes modern atonal music leaves me a bit cold, but this spoke deeply to me in its non-melodic style of this modern age we’re living.  Here, the composer uses his orchestra in wondrous ways to create the sounds of our world.  The orchestra chatters verbally while playing, and unimagined combinations of experimental sound are thrown together and planned meticulously to reflect the sound of our urban world today.

In the midst of seeming cacophony, piano and black Scottish flute play a wonderful jig for 32 bars and balance the experience in heart and mind.  Three percussionists worked themselves into a sweat brilliantly serving up a backdrop of otherwise unheard-of sound from a symphony orchestra.

And then came intermission.  I turned to my friend, one Jenny Burton of WFM vocal fame, and spoke, “Now hold on to your socks, for here comes the master.”

I was, of course, bragging about my friend, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who I’ve never actually met, but have loved from afar since early childhood when I discovered Russian classical music and sitting spellbound hour after hour deep into the imagination of Sergei Prokofiev and this wondrous composer’s tale of a wolf and a boy of the same name as I.

Well, last night it was Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in E minor written in 1888.  Though I’ve heard many of its themes over my lifetime, I’m not sure if I’ve ever listened to the entire symphony in one sitting.  This will not be the last.  I will buy this symphony today and wear it out!

My goodness, what music!  The master completely did me in in the course of this timeless height of my life.  I sat breathless and wet cheeked as this masterpiece of music poured over me.  At one point during the first movement the cell phone of one clueless lady in our box began to ring.  As she furiously fussed to turn it off fumbling pathetically, and as she received the devastating stares from the audience around, I simply tuned the offending thing out and refused to be bothered, knowing that I was in the presence of God’s great creativity.

What do I remember of the experience?  I remember soaring and floating and being handled like no man has ever handled me.  I remember thinking, “Now don’t forget to breathe, Peter” as the other Peter played me breathless.

I remember the tears pouring down my face unabashedly as the French horn played its exquisite melody at the start of the second movement.  And then, moments later, when the strings picked up the same theme and carried it on, I remember thinking that I would never again hear anything as beautiful as that.

I remember falling down the rabbit hole into the music, into the immortal mind of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, my friend since childhood, and being taken to musical places and heights never before visited.  I never wanted it to end and yet I was glad when it was over.  I couldn’t have taken the ride much longer.  I might have perished.

But oh what a way to die!

As we walked out into the cold New York City night air, totally spent, but somehow still on that cloud, we didn’t say much.  We were simply trying to find the ground to walk upon.

How grateful I am today for that experience just last night!  I probably won’t get much sleep tonight.  My being has been somewhat translated into something different, something better for the experience.  I guess that’s what true inspiration does for us.  It changes our being into something better.

I guess that’s why I’ve chosen to spend my life in the business of Inspiration.  If I could only inspire others like my friend, Peter.  Perhaps in another lifetime.

In the meantime, I’m grateful for this man, his eternal liveliness, this wondrous orchestra and its conductor’s interpretation of this great work.  I’m grateful for this amazing hall and its place in my life.  In the words of Lou Gehrig’s famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”