Large Fierce Mammal

I have just come out the other end, as it were, of a week of battle with an intestinal infection of surpassing vileness. Among other things, it spawned this.

Critic’s Notes on Maestro Whynacht’s Symphony, “A Week in Thirty-six Movements”

I attended the first performance of Maestro Whynacht’s daunting new symphony, “A Week in Thirty-six Movements”, at its opening last Monday night. The venue was small, intimate without feeling cramped, and made it easy to internalize the near full-body experience of the performance as though I were the only one there, notwithstanding the uncomfortable seating for a production of such length.

When the curtain opened, a breathless and at once feverish silence was abruptly blown away by the woodwinds and horns, whose delivery of the overture was as thunderous as it was long.

From there, each movement flowed with unbridled fluidity into the next in a primal rhythm rivaling the tides of a restless sea o’erblown by the raging gusts of a tempest. Held in their grip, I soon found myself lost in their midst so that, drained beyond caring, I realized I had lost sight of their onset, and all belief in their end.

And then, as quickly as they’d come, the raging torrents that had rushed through me seemingly a lifetime, abruptly and unapologetically gave way once again to the woodwinds alone as they opened the final movement. In this, hinting in a manner at once soothing and unsettling, that bright skies and light breezes, however seasoned with the hominess of low tide on a rocky beach, do not forfend the return of the storm.

The crescendo, when it came, crashed in with the solidity of a stone, and the finality of a thunderclap, leaving me feeling drained and hollow.

Coming to myself, I have realized that this piece is among Maestro Whynacht’s most commanding and disturbing performances. His Masterful use of the wind section to build anticipation demands full subjugation to the experience so that one would think twice of straying from the venue were it on fire.

Notwithstanding that, and Masterful though it was, this is an experience I neither recommend, nor wish to repeat.