Cohen in Ljubljana.

We all have stupid nagging regrets: why didn’t I buy that 50%-off jacket? Why didn’t I give a euro to that guy in the street? Why did I go back for seconds? These are not the serious regrets at life-turns we’ve taken or missed. They’re just, well, stupid nagging regrets.

One of my stupidest ones is not giving a standing ovation at a Ljubljana concert four or five years ago, not joining the only other person who stood to applaud conductor George Pehlivanian and the Slovenian Philharmonic on that night. That other person was pianist Paul Badura Skoda.

Classical music programmes are generally divided in half. You hear a star violinist or pianist who has zipped into town to play the first half of the programme – in this case, Badura Skoda doing a Mozart piano concerto – and then there’s a break, and then the orchestra continues sans soloist with a symphony. The soloist rarely sticks around to listen to Act II.

Badura Skoda sat front and centre for, then stood in appreciation of, the piece that followed the intermission: Bruckner’s rarely played First Symphony. He was 80 years old at the time.

If I hit 70 or 80, or 76, I do not plan to be working like a dog – which is what Leonard Cohen was doing last night in Ljubljana. He sang for over three hours, it was an incredible concert experience, and I won’t try to describe it in musical terms.

I won’t try to describe it because “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” That’s Igor Stravinsky’s line. Unless it was Steve Martin who said it. Or Elvis Costello. Or Miles Davis. Or Woody Allen. Or Frank Zappa. Whoever said it, we get the point. Descriptions of music tend to fall into vagueness, bloodless technicality, or preciousness.

Hearing Cohen’s “The Partisan” sung by him in Ljubljana was spookily moving. Back in Toronto, “Les Allemands étaient chez moi…” was just a poetic voice, a mask worn for the length and sake of a catchy tune. As a teenager, I knew the word “partisan” as a synonym for “biased” and only vaguely as something to do with a resistance movement in a faraway country. Again I was eerily reminded of personal worlds colliding, then merging (most of my top concert experiences have taken place here, not there. That’s a tipping point in my autobiography).

Cohen followed up “The Partisan” with “Hallelujah,” a song we’ve all heard in voices lovelier than his. Wasn’t this going to be a let-down? Had he lost his song to Shrek and the gang? Half-way through the song, Cohen’s 76-year old voice cracked, humanly forsaking him; and it was beautiful and everybody stood at the end of the concert.

About the Author

JB is my human barometer. More on that eventually.