(I often think that my “reviews” are not reviews at all, but rather that each performance I see is a four-dimensional Rorschach ink blot and what you read is my free associative rambling; you need only nod thoughtfully and say, “Hmmm. I see…”)

Raul Rediscovered, the nonworld compositions of Raul Rothblatt

Stop right there: to the uninitiated (Mommie), the young man does not believe that he is from another planet. “World” is the label that our American record stores use to describe music from the rest of the world for which, they’ve found, we will pay money. It includes both pure pedigrees of various national and ethnic styles and instruments (Hungarian cello, for example, or West African finger piano), and what Raul usually plays, which is Afro-Hungarian Groove. So, Raul is a hoity-toity classically-trained cellist who has evolved (or devolved—you are entitled to your own opinion) into a World composer who likes to jam with West African guys who squeak on gourds and bang on tree trunks.

In Raul Rediscovered, the nonworld compositions of Raul Rothblatt, Raul pulled his old classical stuff from his days as a student at the Lizst Academy in Budapest out of mothballs and invited us to come along on his nostalgic trip.

So, five minutes into the show, all I could think was that this “classical” music was clearly the work of somebody... who... would eventually come to be fascinated by the sounds of gourds and tree trunks. “What’s so ‘classical’ about this?” I wondered. It’s kinda like sayin’ that any time a girl slaps on a pair of toeshoes, that makes it “ballet.” And I remember that the first time I saw Balanchine’s Who Cares? the liner notes defended the use of the music (Gershwin, who belongs to a genre that aging rocker Rod the Mod now calls “American Standard”) in a “classical”—i.e., toeshoe—dance. So, (Since I’ve already established that I cite record store categories as An Authority) what about “Classic Rock”? Duke Ellington (another classically-trained musician) recorded a version of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcraker; Bill Haley and the Comets had a brass (ok, “horns”) section; The Stones’ album, Beggars Banquet—a classic if ever there was one—was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra; The Who wrote an opera; “A Fifth of Beethoven” was a Top 40 Hit; oh, and for years, operatic tenor Robert Merrill sang the US National Anthem at Yankee games.

Again, I ask you: What the heck makes “classical” music “classical,” anyway?

By the time we got halfway into the show, I decided that, for me, “classical” music is stuff that is good to listen to when I need to think about something else. Not that I was bored—I really wasn’t: I didn’t doze off or anything. But my mind wandered. I thought about my plans for the holiday season. What would I do about the office party? What do I want for my birthday?

Is that a bad thing? Well, if I told you that I instead stayed home that evening and listened to some [classical] music and got my thoughts together and focused for the coming week, what then? Is it so awful that I did those things—listened to some [classical] music and got my thoughts together and focused for the coming week—in a chic artists’ space in the Village rather than at home on the couch, covered in cat hair? C’mon! I go out sometimes, I got a life!

But did I like it? Well, I suppose I liked it well enough. But I prefer the gourds and tree trunks.