In the subway station, rush-hour commuters didn’t notice the man in the baseball cap.
He opened a violin case and started into Bach’s iconic “Chaconne”, the most emotional and difficult of violin solos. No-one cared.
After a few minutes, a man turned for a quick look as he walked by. Then a woman dropped a dollar into the violin case and kept walking.
No-one noticed the $4 million violin. Made in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari, it is named after Bronislaw Huberman, the Jewish virtuoso who started the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra just as Hitler was coming to power. Huberman realised he could get exit visas for Jewish musicians and their families to leave Hitler’s Reich and join his orchestra. He raised money for this during a packed concert tour of America in 1936, supported by Albert Einstein. The tour was a brilliant success, except for a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall. Huberman decided to play the second half on his other violin, and his Stradivarius was stolen from his dressing room. Huberman was told the terrible news as he came off stage, but he kept calm and went back on for encores. His Strad had been stolen once before in Vienna and recovered after a few days, but this time he was not so lucky. He never saw it again, though he did receive a large insurance payout from Lloyds of London. The thief tried to sell the Stradivarius to a pawnbroker but was told it was too hot so, for more than 50 years, the thief played it, disguised with boot polish and stained with cigarette smoke from seedy bars. After a jail term for another crime, he confessed on his death bed, and his abusive, alcoholic girlfriend got a $US263,000 finder’s fee from Lloyd’s—huge wealth way back then. She blew it all within a few years and died in a trailer park. But nothing stopped Huberman playing, and he raised enough money to save more than 1000 Jewish people from Hitler’s gas chambers.
And now in the subway the Huberman Stradivarius wept, laughed, flirted, questioned, raged and worshipped through five other masterpieces, but only six people stopped briefly to listen. After 43 minutes, the violin case contained only $US32.17.
Yet three days earlier, the violinist, minus his baseball cap, had packed Boston’s Symphony Hall, where the cheapest seats cost over $100 and his fee was $1000 per minute. But only one person in the subway recognised him as Joshua Bell, a superstar of classical music ever since his debut at Carnegie Hall at age 17. Bell’s parents had realised they had a prodigy when, at four years old, he stretched rubber bands on his dresser drawers and twanged out songs by moving the drawers to vary the pitch.
Joshua Bell likes to think that his mother’s Russian Jewish ancestors heard Huberman play his violin in Palestine. Every time he plays in Israel with the orchestra Huberman started, now called the Israel Philharmonic, he knows there are musicians and audience members there who would not be alive but for what Huberman did using his violin.
One critic said Bell’s playing “does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live”. But none of the subway commuters in the line for lottery tickets even bothered to look.
Similarly, when a luminous choir of angels exploded into song to announce the birth of God’s Messiah—Peace on earth! Goodwill to all people!—the leaders and priests didn’t even notice. So the angels sang to a few shepherds who couldn’t read but were fascinated by ancient prophecies.
Messiah’s birth was in the city of His ancestor King David, but not in a palace. His relatives were all there for a tax census, but not one of them offered Messiah’s young mother a comfortable room for her first birth—an animal shed was good enough for a pregnancy out of wedlock.
Israel’s religious scholars knew Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but none came—only some foreign philosophers. They at least began to comprehend who was actually in front of them.
At 12, walking into the Jerusalem temple and asking questions of learned old heads, Messiah seemed bright, but just another Bar Mitzvah boy.
He worked hard in a rough town for another 18 years, just another carpenter.
When His teaching delighted crowds, He was called uneducated, illegitimate, a threat to pax Romana. Even His mother and brothers wondered sometimes whether He was divine or not quite right in the head. But no man spoke like this Man—lepers and hookers and tax collectors and fishermen and a few priests sensed that this was God incognito. Even blind people saw it.
When He healed the sick and even raised dead people, He was called devilish, and was finally executed in the most cruel and shameful way the Romans knew, like just another criminal. Most of His friends ran, but a former prostitute, a few other women, His mother and His youngest disciple stayed to see His final minutes. The hardened Roman centurion who ordered all His pain saw such tough kindness that He blurted out, “This man was definitely the Son of God.” One crucified thief recognised Him as Lord and was promised paradise with Him, but the crowd mocked, “If you’re really God’s Son, come down off the cross!”
It was just as Isaiah the prophet predicted six centuries earlier:
“Who believed what we tried to tell them?
Who noticed God’s hand at work?
. . . He had no image or majesty to draw our attention,
No special appearance that made us want him.
He was despised and rejected by people,
A man who knew sorrow, well acquainted with grief.
People turned their faces away from him.
He was despised, and we thought he was nobody.
Yet it was our grief he was carrying, our sorrow that he shouldered . . .
He was wounded for our arrogant foolishness,
And punished for our sins.
He endured a flogging to make us well,
And because of his wounds, we are healed.” (Isaiah 53)
Three days after dying, Messiah reclaimed the eternal life and glory He had shared in heaven as Almighty God. Ruling the vast universe, He will one day take over this poor little rebel planet and reign as Prince of Peace, so that there will be no more death or pain, neither sorrow nor crying, and all tears will be wiped away—from your eyes and mine, if we let Him.
His music still plays today, though many people ignore it, underestimate Him, laugh at His followers, and ignore His teachings or, worse, twist them to support their own ideas. But those who listen know He gives joy even in sorrow, a love stronger than hate, hope in the worst times and a truth that makes you free.
His music plays for everyone, in everyday life as we work, even in rush hour. Stop and listen.
Dr Aleta King a violinist and conductor, won scholarships two years running to the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy in Hungary. She is director of the conservatorium at Avondale University and loves the music and theology of JS Bach.
