Thursday 23rd April 2009 – From Breakfast to Shubert on Route 66

Bernard Haitink heard I was in town, and promised to get the lads together for a memorable performance of Schubert's Great C Major symphony, his ninth (or eighth, or seventh, depending on who you believe.  Bernard says everybody just calls it the 'Great' to avoid this academic dispute, although that's really to distinguish it from the sixth, the Little C Major).  "We'll be at the Symphony Center", he says, "right at the end of Route 66".  "The end of Route 66?  That's in California"!  "Not that end, you fool, this end, corner of Jackson and Michigan".  Symphony Hall, it turns out, is right where Route 66 begins (nobody really thinks of this as an end, although, of course, it is).

My hotel is almost on Jackson, so I'm practically staying on Route 66.  Bernie and the boys having organised my evening entertainment for me, and given me a geography lesson, I head out onto Route 66 to find breakfast.  Lou Mitchell is more into history than geography: he's been doing breakfast on Route 66 since 1923 (I think, basically, everything started in Chicago in 1923).  He does a hum-dinger of a breakfast, served in the frying pan; with a terrific marmalade that looks and tastes like it was made from yesterday's oranges.  No matter what you ask for in the US, you always get a glass of water: in Lou Mitchell's, you also get a slice of orange and a prune.

Struggling under the weight of breakfast, I totter off to the Loop to play on the 'L'.  The elevated railway comes into the center of Chicago and goes round in a loop and out again.  This part of town is actually known as 'The Loop'.  The railway is elevated over the street, and was built not in 1923, but in the 1890's.  It must make downtown Chicago the noisiest place on earth.  I've bought a three-day unlimited-use pass, so I have myself hours of fun imagining I'm in all those films where goodies chase baddies over, under, along, and through the 'L'.

Then it's back to the hotel to tart myself up for Bernie's little do.  As a pointer to budding maestros the world over, Bernie has come up with a great stunt for milking the applause: he totters onto the stage like an old man (he's only 80), aided by a stick, and takes what-seems-like hours to get to the rostrum.  Of course the audience burst into applause the moment he appears, and are then committed to keeping going till he gets his stick and himself organised and raises the baton.

This tottering back and forth is obviously a trade mark, and happens at the end of every piece.  This being Chicago, and it being necessary to pour a heavy layer of culture over us, We get a bit of Webern and some Dutch totty giving us an eyeful and a splendid interpretation of Mahler's Rückert Lieder.  The only fault here was a rather prosaic translation in the program.   It spoils poetry if you turn it into prose, doesn't it?

And that, apart from a startling  bagpipe rendition of 'Amazing Grace' on the Jukebox of the Irish pub on the way back (I asked who had paid good money for that, but nobody would own up), was Route 66 for now. I shall return to it in a month or two, but this time at nearly the other end, in the Mohave Desert in California, when I visit Glasgow CA.  (Glasgow? How did Glasgow get into this?)