Concert: Vivaldi and Pachelbel @ Île de Saint-Louis in Sainte-Chapelle

Imagine sitting in a French chapel on Île de Saint-Louis built in 1242 by the canonized King, Louis XII and a quartet is about perform. Sunlight streams into the chapel's magnificent rose window as Pachelbel's Cannon in D Major starts. You are perplexed because the program indicated a Mozart, but delighted, because it just so happens to be your favorite Baroque Era piece. By the end of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, you have entered a peaceful reverie!

Evening concert, Sainte-Chapelle

The celebrated windows flamed with light

directly pouring north across the Seine;

we restled into place. Then violins

vaunting Vivaldi’s strident strength, the Brahms,

seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,

bit by bit, the vigor from the red,

the blazing blue, so that the listening eye

saw suddenly the thin black lines, in shapes

of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held

the holy glowing fantasy together.

The music surged; the glow became a milk

a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed

until our beating hearts, our violins

were cased in thin but sold sheets of lead.

-John Updike