I have hardly ever talked about books.
When I commute from Aix to Paris I read non -stop for three hours or so.
I then forget where I am. I have always read hungrily, not liking to put an end before the End, and having to wait for some spare time to carry on reading. When I grab a book I do not like to be disturbed.
When I travel, I select my books by their thickness according to the emptiness of my schedule and my reading speed. It reminds me of my teaching days when grammar-school teenagers wanted to know the number of pages there was in the novel they had to read, and complained because there were too many of them!
My latest pleasure is to choose a rather thin book from recent writers at the station bookshop, very often Payot, where the selection is fairly good. Yesterday in Paris, I came across a jewel, according to my taste, and I am still thinking, even blogging about it! Probably because it is about Mozart and how to get ready for an important date with Mozart K622 at a concert hall in Paris, for the first time, after having listened at home to Mozart K622 conducted by G.Szell at the head of the Cleveland Orchestra and Marcellus playing the clarinet. The emotion was so marvellous and unique that the writer wants to experience it again at the concert hall.
It is hilarious and deeply moving. It has got rythm and would be terribly hard to translate. I noticed Christian Gailly is not a young writer, which means we share some identical outlooks and I was not surprised by his style and puns, sometimes rude words. And above all I loved the way he did say he could not write about K622 and actually talked about this famous clarinet concerto in the WAM excellent chapter. When he gets to the difficult task of putting music into words when music is the transcendental language which does not need any translation into words, he really won my total admiration with his simple approach and sincerity, it is the center of this brilliant chapter "WAM",our dearest Wolfie!
What is terrible now is that not only I keep in mind all the smashing moments of this rather short novel ( only 128 pages), but I also would like to get hold of this precise Szell/ Marcellus/ Cleveland clarinet concerto which seduced the writer.
This is the beginning of another chapter for me, after this excellent Mozart K622, which has probably been translated into English.
This is the French trailor for the novel:
"Une nuit alors qu'il est au lit dans le noir et somnole la radio allumée, la musique de Mozart s"insinue dans la chambre et le réveille. L’émotion est si forte qu’il a peur de la perdre, de ne jamais pouvoir la revivre. Il se procure différents enregistrements de l’œuvre, les écoute, mais chaque fois quelque chose manque, il ne retrouve pas le plaisir de cette nuit-là. Puis un jour il apprend que le concerto va être donné à Paris. Il décide de s’y rendre."
This is the French advert about this witty thoughts about Mozart, language, social habits, love, of course and solitude...
(one night, while he was lying in bed, almost sleeping in the dark, with the radio on, Mozart musical phrases crept into his room and woke him up. The emotion he felt was so strong that he did not want to lose it, and perhaps never be able to feel it again. He got all the different renditions of this concerto he possibly could find, listened to them all, but each time something was missing, the pleasure he felt that precise night was impossible to recreate. Then, later on, he found out that the concerto was going to be played in Paris. He, then, decided to get a ticket and go."
The whole concerto is on line through this fine article from Wiki
Mozart has found his best admiror! I bet he would have liked the writer's love stories as well, first when he was getting the right attire for this very special outing and then the strange encounter with his neighbour at the concert hall, who also can feel the music in a very special way.
