Original image by There Stands the Glass.
A distraught man seated next to me in the second row of Escher String Quartet’s recital at Polsky Theatre never stopped staring at his phone during the concert on Wednesday, August 3. The discourteous behavior would ordinarily enrage me.
Yet prior to the performance the Chinese national explained he was communicating with friends and family in Taiwan who were closely monitoring the Chinese military drills around the contested island.
Compositions by Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók and Antonín Dvořák sounded especially consequential as my new friend frantically doomscrolled. Might, as he implied at intermission, the event be among the last concerts on earth? And how precisely would I want to go out?
I consume gobs of reggaeton for the same reason other people swallow pharmaceutical mood elevators. Yet I’d be mortified if Bad Bunny was playing when the world ended. Escher String Quartet would provide a far more suitable sendoff.
Even though one member of the acclaimed quartet committed minor flubs during the concert presented by the Heartland Chamber Music Festival, the gorgeous Haydn, queasy Bartók and sublime Dvořák works riveted the audience of about 300. And at only $10 a ticket, the recital was an economical end-of-the-world bargain.