After intermission, Le sacre du printemps was ready to assert itself.

When The Rite of Spring was first performed, it nearly caused a riot. Now I understand why.

This music must be experienced live. Recordings are useless. The electrical divide is too great. I've listened to recordings post-concert and they don't work. The energy generated by the orchestra is missing on a recording. On Sunday, the energy of the orchestra filled the hall.

What we got from The La Jolla Symphony was a massive orchestra in a medium-sized room. The audience could feel the music pulsating in, around, and through us.

I wanted to riot. I wanted to rip and tear the illusion of the polite audience member. I was ready to go pagan then and there.

The performance was more than dominant. It was on the edge of glorious chaos. At one point we could hear conductor Steven Schick inhale two beats of the score into his body before launching the orchestra, once again, into the abyss. The music was literally inside of him.

The La Jolla Symphony is composed of volunteer musicians. They are true amateurs if we go to the root of the word. Amateur means "lover of". The root being amator. Lover.

Amateurs play for love of the music. We get caught up in wanting professionals and miss the importance of amateurism. We miss the significance of performing for love. Amateurism is more important than professionalism. However, dilettantism is something else.

This was a performance that I will never forget. Stravinsky wanted to give us the out-of-control violence of the Russian Spring as the earth erupts from its winter slumber. He wanted to give us the violence of primordial nature-worship. I got it. I finally got Stravinsky.

After the applause ended, the venerable ladies next to me said that they needed to go have a good dinner and recover.

I thought the same thing. Except my good dinner should have consisted of tracking a caribou across the tundra, wrestling it to the ground and snapping its neck after a tremendous struggle. Then I'd slit its throat and eat raw meat until my stomach lurched. Covered in gore, I'd bathe in an icy river and have wild pagan sex with my companion until dawn.

I'm pretty sure that's what my respectable friends meant by a good dinner.

In reality, I went down to a restaurant on La Jolla Shores, which was decked out in campy Halloween decorations, and had pasta al forno--which is to say macaroni and cheese. I didn't even smash any car windows or set any dumpsters on fire along the way.

I "got" Stravinsky but I failed to act on it.

I did go pagan later that evening but I can't say how or where.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMCd9DyzCCw