We now have a peak experience to add to the list for Mainly Mozart, but it came from Prokofiev and Beethoven.

The Mainly Mozart Festival is taking a chronological journey through Mozart’s life over the course of six years. This is the second year and the challenge for the Festival and the audience alike is to find and enjoy compelling music from Mozart’s early compositions.

There is plenty to choose from yet at the same time the festival is moving chronologically through the lives of other composers which fit within the parameters of the festival orchestra. Sorry folks, no Mahler Symphony No. 1 but this year we have had Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and Piano Concerto No. 1.

The piano concerto was performed on Saturday, June 17, after some forgettable “party music” by Mozart. This brief remembering of the forgotten is one of the benefits of exploring Mozart’s earlier music. On the other hand, these are pieces which Mozart, in all likelihood, dashed off in a half an hour or so.

But Beethoven...

Pianist Jorge Federico Osorio all but disappeared while playing the Beethoven. The level of his technique and musicianship removed all barriers between us and the ambitious young Beethoven. Nay, his abilities removed all barriers between us and the divine muse which whispered into Beethoven’s ear and compelled his pen to toil for our benefit.

The same can be said of Maestro Francis and the orchestra, and nowhere has that been more evident so far this season than in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1: Classical. Un-be-liev-able.

There is no way on God’s green earth that

that performance of Prokofiev actually existed. I mean I was there in the Balboa Theater, but at the same time I was somewhere else on a Platonic plane of pure potential.

Perhaps you’ve heard the idea that a chair is not a chair because of its temporary nature. What we call a chair is actually not a noun but a verb. So the universe or matter is “chairing”, a tree is “treeing” and a table is “tabling” etc. This concept has become a part of quantum physics, but Plato and his forms gave us an ancient access to this modern concept.

On Saturday night there were no musicians or audience. The universe was simply Prokofiev-ing and that was brought on by the extraordinary ability of the musicians on the stage.

Musicians or a musician-ing universe? Oh boy, this get complicated quickly.