One of the major events of this year's Oxford Festival of the Arts was this pairing of two musical greats in the iconic Sheldonian Theatre. And it was shame to see so many empty seats as it was a joyous celebration of music making that should not have been missed.
The Brodsky Quartet are celebrating fifty years in the industry and Willard White will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his professional debut next year. And what is so evident from this concert is that they are all still loving performing at the highest level.
Our cultural landscape can so often be dominated by an obsession with youth and the new. We forget to properly celebrate experience, maturity and enduring passion.
This is something that resonated particularly having just attended a revelatory production of As You Like It in Stratford where the the majority of the cast were over seventy years of age. It showed exactly how actors who have many decades of performing Shakespeare under their belt can bring a unique depth of understanding to roles they would never expect to perform at this point in their careers.
Coming from that to this concert only reinforced the point that we should be cherishing and valuing experience more than ever.
White is one of the most celebrated bass baritones ever to have graced opera stages. His voice is lustrous and his engagement with both text and audience is peerless. The programming was rich and various covering everything from English folk songs to My Way via Copland, Gershwin and Massenet. He seamlessly switched genre, language and style. It was masterful.
Being accompanied by a string quartet brings a lightness and transparency to the recital. The Brodsky Quartet have an almost telepathic connection to one another and this gives them the freedom to react to the moment giving their playing an improvisational quality that is mesmerising.
But what really came across was the fun that they were all having and that was infectious. It was still serious music making but done with an evident passion and joy.
Those of us who were present will not soon forget this event. It really was something special.