My Uncle Bobby, z”l, was a jazz enthusiast, and always contended, in discussions with lovers of classical music, that anyone who claimed to enjoy listening to a 40-minute symphony was deluding himself: what he actually enjoyed were a few key moments, and he was prepared to wait through the other passages for the pleasure of these ‘highs’. Jazz recordings, Uncle Bobby believed, were a distillation of the ‘highs’, without any of the boring in-between bits.

I didn’t subscribe to his theory then, still less now…and yet there are some works that contain, for me, undeniable ‘high’ moments. I would, nevertheless, argue that the impact of those moments owes much to the surrounding music within which they sit.

For instance (I recall that my father z”l once told me that he was 14 years old before he realised that for instance was two words; until then, he visualised it as frinstance). Anyway, for instance, one such moment for me is the last three notes of the second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4. If you can spare 5’ 35”, please listen to the whole movement, as interpreted by Christian Zimmerman and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. (The movement runs from 19’25” to 25”00.) Of course, if you have a full 35 minutes to spare, I recommend listening to the whole thing.

I am no musicologist, but, for me, what is going on here is one long build towards resolution. At the beginning of the movement, the orchestra speaks in short, abrupt, hesitant, stuttering, broken phrases, in a minor key; the music is indecisive and troubled. The piano part, in contrast, is serene, measured, in long, sweeping passages. As the movement progresses, the piano passages became shorter, as if influenced by the orchestra. At the same time, the piano ‘calms’ the orchestra. By the end, soloist and orchestra are as one.

The movement closes with the orchestra playing a sustained chord, quietly, while the soloist plays a sequence of single notes moving up the scale, that start by echoing notes of the chord being played by the orchestra, in perfect harmony, but then turn back from the top of the scale, with the two final notes making us suspect that this is not the resolution of the piece, but a transition to what is to be a joyous final movement. As the piano crests that run, my heart always skips a beat. (Hope yours does, too.) Of course, I suffer from atrial fibrillation, so my heart often skips a beat. (Hope yours doesn’t!)

This happens, for me, not just in music, but also in theatre.

London’s Barbican Centre boasts a vary large apron stage; the distance from downstage right to upstage left, when the apron is in place, is about 16 metres.

If I close my eyes, I can still see Lady Percy, in a 1983 production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I, entering at the back of the stage, very agitated, having just learnt that Hotspur, her husband, is about to leave for war. She spots him at the very front of the stage, and runs the entire diagonal from back to front at full pelt. Hearing her approach, he turns; a few metres away from him, she leaps into his arms, and wraps her arms and legs around him.

From the dialogue between the couple in their few scenes together in the play, we can easily feel that they are uncomfortable with each other. Percy is a man of action, not talk, and he certainly does not feel any need to make a woman privy to his battle plans. Lady Percy seems unsure of Hotspur’s love, and feels shut out by him from the things that matter to him.

However, in this one moment on stage, we learn of a whole other side to their relationship that the words cannot convey. We see tremendous passion, impetuosity and physicality. We see that Lady Percy trusts Hotspur completely, and is absolutely confident that he will catch her.

When he does catch her, without staggering back, it is a thrilling moment for the audience: Hotspur is standing perilously close to the front edge of the apron, and Lady Percy, though slight, has launched herself at him like a bullet. We feel some of the relief we feel watching a successful acrobatic or trapeze performance, and we admire Hotspur’s strength and solidity. The leap, and the catch, are an expression of their love for each other, an expression that is missing from their dialogue. The texture of their relationship, and of the play, is enriched by this wonderful moment of theatre.

One more moment, this time of both theatre and music. Bernice and I were privileged to see Amadeus, in Bristol, in its pre-London 1982 run, with Frank Finlay playing Salieri. At the time, the round trip from Nantymoel, where we then lived, to Bristol was well over three hours; I can honestly say it would have been worth walking to Bristol to see this particular production. Although the play had premiered with Paul Scofield in London a year earlier, we knew very little about it before seeing it.

There is a scene, near the beginning of the play, when Salieri, in a single revelatory moment, realises Mozart’s genius. He hears, from a side-room, a wind serenade, which you can hear here. Instead of attempting to describe the music, I will give you the words the playwright Peter Schaeffer gave to Salieri:

The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.

I can only add that, in Bristol, that evening, that music soared over the theatre and we all felt the same awe as Salieri, knowing that we were in the presence of a divine talent.

It is these moments that drive me to continue going to live theatre and live music concerts. At a certain level, this makes no sense. You pay a not insignificant sum of money for tickets, drive an inordinate distance, spend ages looking for a parking space, and then have to half-jog to reach the auditorium in time. No sooner do you sit down than you have to stand again so that even-later-comers can squeeze past, and now you’re settling yourself for an evening of trying to filter out the rustling, coughing and whispering of those around you.

Why do I do it? I wouldn’t bet on my ears being able to distinguish a live recital in the concert hall from the reproduction through my mid-priced CD player and speakers in the comfort of my own home. At home I can listen to Daniel Barenboim, Pinhas Zukerman and Jacqueline du Pre performing Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, in a recording from 1970 that has perhaps never been bettered for unabashed youthful enthusiasm.

We’ve already established that I’m not a musicologist; if I were, I could do even better, perhaps, and read the score, hearing the music in my head exactly as I feel it should sound. So why do we still go to concert halls…or, indeed, theatres, to see live plays, when we can download films and enjoy a more comfortable seat with unimpeded sightlines.

Not everyone does go, of course. Our son, Micha’el, himself a multi-talented amateur musician, hates going to live arts performances of any kind, because he finds himself on the edge of his seat, imagining all of the things that might go dreadfully wrong.

This is, paradoxically, almost exactly the same reason that drives me to go to live arts performances; I find myself on the edge of my seat, imagining all of the things that might go wonderfully right. The fact is that, every time I go to the theatre, as the lights go down, I have a strong feeling that this may just be the night when the cast, or the musicians, all give the performance of their lives. This, I guess, makes me an incurable optimist, but the moments I have described here, and more than a few others over the decades, give me good grounds for my optimism.

All I have to hope now is that, at some point in the future before we all become immobile or gaga, we. and you, will be able again to enjoy live arts performances (and grandchildren, of course).

Until that moment, Bernice and I will just have to make do with our video of A Man for All Seasonings.