This week, I listened to Alan (brilliantly) play the Bach Prelude & Fugue (St. Anne) in E-flat Major (BWV 552).  From the sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, I was transported back 6 years, and hundreds of miles away to the Votivkirche in Vienna, Austria. 

I was traveling in Germany, and had made a side trip to Vienna to sing for an agent.  As luck would have it, I was there at the exact time as a dear friend who was to sing in a concert of Russian music in the Votivkirche. 

My sightseeing, the day of the concert, purposely included a trial run from my hotel on Mariahilferstrasse to the church and back, just to make sure that I'd know where I was going in the dark of evening. 

It was a bitterly cold December day, and I pulled my new shearling hat down over my ears as I made my way across the city.  I entered the church, to hear familiar strains of a piece of organ music - Bach's "St. Anne" - that I'd heard so many times at home.

In an instant, the familiarity of the work made me feel not so far away.  I wandered up the aisle, eyes cast upward to the majestic Baroque-ness, welling up in thankfulness that I was able to experience such wonders.

That evening, I attended the concert of the Bolshoi Don Kosaken.  My Bulgarian friend, Georgi, who I had not seen in over a dozen years, was now living in Germany, and was singing as a substitute tenor in the group for this one concert.

Assuming that a last-minute ticket would find me somewhere far in the back, behind a sight-obstructing column, I was giddy with the treatment I received - worthy of a princess! 

Thanks to Georgi, I was ushered to the very first rows, and seated next to the wife of the CONDUCTOR of the group!  In the chill of the enormous church on a cold winter's night, she generously offered me part of her fur coat to tuck around my legs.

The concert of urgent, melancholic, heartfelt, Russian music brought tears to my eyes, with the familiar tunes.  The melodies of that music somehow bypassed the fact that I've never heard some of them before, yet still seem familiar. 

And to see Georgi's smiling, familiar face among the fine singers, made that evening, swaddled in the Conductor's wife's fur, listening to the Music of my People, sung by a dear friend from another time, was pure, Viennese Magic. 

As I left the Votivkirche, the night was crisp and cold, and I looked up to see the brightest of moons.  I made my way to the U-Bahn singing the Moon Song that Mommie and I always sing, in harmony: "I see the moon, the moon sees me.  God bless the moon, and God bless me."

How one piece of music has the power to ignite layer upon layer of memory, is just one of it's wonders.

Thank you, Alan & J.S. Bach, for that one...
 


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