Many years ago Judith and I stopped in London on our way back from Israel. We saw the play Amadeus there. It was a pivotal point in my life.

The play’s subject is mediocrity; that is, Salieri’s, in light of Mozart’s genius; or, how Salieri deals with being a commoner in the court of an otherworldly king. He finds himself in the terrible circumstance of having to compete with one of humankind’s geniuses; and worse, having to justify his superior social status.

At least that’s what I thought the play was about at the time. I was depressed by my own quotidian nature. It didn’t seem fair. I mean, I had thought so highly of myself up till then. I was different. I felt things, and had succeeded in articulating a sense of difference. I’d been touched by the ineffable, etc.

I remember feeling a sort of doom—doomed to work in the family business; of all things, to be a car salesman. I considered all the other things I might do while being a car salesman; all the things I might study, how I might write something of importance, how at least I would try.

The other day we heard Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde conducted by Dudamel. The orchestra was gloriously precise—Dudamel, electrifying. The mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford radiant and poised.

The piece is made up of six songs. The sixth, “Der Abschied“ (The Farewell), is as long as the combined length of the five that precede it. The piece flows toward and empties into this last song; its topography, its leitmotifs, its aching, tumble headlong into Der Abschied.

When it came to the end, Dudamel held the orchestra in place for what seemed like half a minute. The several thousand-strong audience was silent, enveloped in a Mahlerian otherworldliness.