Borodin: Quartet #2 in D major

I promised myself that one day when I had expendable income I would get me some violin lessons.  I've played classical musical on the piano all my life.  It has been a powerful emotional outlet for me, and good recordings of Chopin - my all time favorite composer - make my heart go pitter-patter.  Yet, the piano remains a percussion instrument and can never achieve the lyrical emotions of the cello or viola.

A hundred years ago, My Beloved and I were driving in the car listening to an NPR review of a new recording of Mozart for two violins and a viola.  The reviewer commented that Mozart, speaking generally, was a pretty up-beat composer...with the exception of this one piece.  And then they played an excerpt of the four saddest bars of music ever heard in all the world.  In seconds, tears were streaming down my face and I felt like I would never be happy ever again.  And then it was just as quickly over.  It was an amazing experience.

For Christmas, my parents - who have always fostered and fed this love of the classics - gave me a recording of select string quartets by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Shostoakovich. Without exaggeration, it has been YEARS since I listened to this kind of music.  And now (I'm listening to it as I write this) I can't imagine why I would listen to anything else?  Singer-songwriter (my popular default) is so obvious.  This?  This is layers of call/recall, excitement, chase, longing, playfulness!  It's like listening to a recording of Churchill, then listening to Dubyah!  It's like wine after years of water!

In particular, I'm swooning over the Nolturno: Andante mov't of Borodin's Quartet #2 in D Major.  Mom said it was used as a song in the movie "Kismet" (no longer available) for a duet with Anne Blythe and Howard Keel.  My mom chokes up thinking about how these two singers harmonized with each other.  (I get it from her :)  Turns out, Borodin wrote the symphony as a gift for his wife.  She is represented by the violin, he by the cello.  The liner notes proclaim this to be "one of the most exquisite anniversary presents ever given by a man to his wife."

skip to 0:30 and picture yourself watching your beloved across the room, caught in the vicissitudes of his world, as his beauty fills you to your fingertips and you are so full of love that if you opened your mouth to speak this music is the very sound that you would make.