The Hammer

Just like the proverbial loaded gun in the corner, the hammer lay on its side in the percussion section amid the gong, xylophone, and glockenspiel, waiting, just waiting, to be used. It was a brown, wooden hammer, one too large for any normal human purpose, with a rectangular head the size of a cinderblock and a handle three feet long if it was an inch. It had a primitive, and utilitarian, look, the look of a tool our ancestors would have used to smash in the head of a tiger or a bear--or an enemy of the tribe.

When the percussionist at last picked it up an hour into Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony, I shook Rebecca, who I think had fallen asleep, and pointed excitedly toward the stage. "He's fixin' to use the hammer," I whispered. "Look!" Down went the hammer. Splat. Beautiful.

The percussion-rich and triple-forte-laden Sixth Symphony was performed Thursday night in UNC's Memorial Hall. (It is called Memorial Hall for a reason: headstones memorializing deceased Old North Staters line the interior walls of the hall.) At least in the balcony, the rows are close together, such that there is not much room for people to pass by. Soon after I took my seat, a man who looked ninety years old and was dressed in blue jacket and a blue tie pointed three seats to my left and said, "That woman purports to be my wife." "Happy purporting," I told him cheerfully, as I stepped completely out of the narrow row to give the chuckling man room to safely pass.

The performance was by the Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg under the direction of Valery Gergiev, the superstar conductor who resembles a scowling and weary-visaged Ernest Borgnine. The maestro--who, we were informed by an usher, asked that people who exited the hall during the performance be kept from reentering--entered from stage right, took a quick bow, and immediately got down to business. (What's his hurry? Didn't he understand that most people in the audience had come to see him?) He conducted without a baton and without standing on a platform. From time to time he hurriedly brushed with his left hand the hair out of his eyes.