Concert Heaven Concert Hell

Top artists recall their best and worst performances

- Charlotte Smith Editor

THIS MONTH

Nicholas Cords Brooklyn Rider violist

CONCERT HEAVEN Beethoven String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132 - 'Heiliger Dankgesang'

Johnny Gandelsman (violin), Colin Jacobsen (violin), Nicholas Cords (viola), Eric Jacobsen (cello) Todaiji Temple, Japan (Oct 2005) We were just getting going and I'm not sure we even had a name yet. We were all part of the Silk Road Ensemble, which Yo-Yo Ma started, and that was the early playground of ideas for our quartet in many ways. We did a concert at Todaiji Temple, which is this amazing Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan - and it is home to the largest wooden Buddha in the world.

We played the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 132 String Quartet, the 'Heiliger Dankgesang, which is literally the holy song of thanksgiving to the deity. And we played it with this deity behind us; it was just this incredible embrace and it had a kind of heightened power. It lifted the music, it lifted our experience of the music, and for the people there, that power was also felt.