Salut d’Amour in Berlin

A story of two musicians, one summer evening in Berlin, and a love that remained unspoken.

In 1888, Edward Elgar composed a gentle piece of music for Caroline Alice Roberts, the woman he loved and would later marry. He called it Liebesgruss or Love’s Greeting. It was subsequently published as Salut d’Amour.

Written originally for violin and piano, its orchestral arrangement became one of the most tender expressions of affection in classical western music.

There is something unusual about Salut d’Amour. The violins carry its principal melody, while the clarinet, at one point, seems to ask for the melody’s return. The violins respond. It is almost a conversation between two people who have much to say but prefer not to speak.

More than a century later, on 29 June 2019, this composition was part of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s summer concert at the Waldbühne, the magnificent open-air amphitheatre on the western edge of Berlin.

The Rehearsals

Through the spring, rehearsals for successive programmes brought them to the Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz.

She was an accomplished violinist, serious about her music, occasionally impatient with herself. He was an experienced clarinetist, with greying hair, a quiet disposition and a remarkable ability to make even the simplest musical phrase sound thoughtful.

Twenty years separated them, but neither seemed to count the difference when they played. Yet there was something remarkably similar in the way they approached music. Both disliked excessive ornamentation. Both believed that the spaces between notes could be as meaningful as the notes themselves.

They barely spoke during the first few weeks. Musicians have their own ways of becoming familiar: a nod across the stage, a smile when the conductor interrupts, a shared expression of relief when a difficult passage finally comes together.

Gradually, they began meeting during coffee breaks.

One evening, after another rehearsal of Salut d’Amour, she found him standing near the coffee machine.

“Your clarinet sounded rather impatient today,” she remarked.

“Perhaps because the violins were taking their time answering.” He smiled.

She noticed that he had an unusually gentle smile.

Thereafter, the coffee breaks became something both quietly anticipated.

The rehearsals were demanding. Passages were repeated endlessly. The conductor would ask for greater warmth, lighter phrasing, more attention to the other instruments. Some evenings everything seemed right; on others, even familiar passages sounded strangely lifeless.

But gradually the musicians began to discover the extraordinary pleasure of playing together. They were no longer merely reading their individual scores. They were listening, anticipating, making room for one another.

For her, the clarinet had become a particularly familiar voice within the orchestra.

The Journeys Home

The rehearsals often ended late. After packing their instruments, the two would walk towards Potsdamer Platz station and take the S-Bahn.

Berlin at that hour had a different character. The crowds had thinned, shop windows were darkening, and the trains carried tired office workers, students, musicians and the occasional traveller returning from an evening out.

Sometimes they talked about music. Sometimes about nothing in particular. Often they sat quietly, their instrument cases beside them.

She began to enjoy these journeys almost as much as the rehearsals.

There was something comforting about sitting next to someone with whom silence required no explanation.

One evening, as the train approached Friedrichstraße, she asked him a question.

“Does it ever bother you that we spend weeks preparing music that lasts only a few minutes?”

He considered this.

“Perhaps those weeks are also part of the music.”

She looked at him.

“And after the concert?”

He smiled faintly.

“Then we must learn to live without the rehearsals.”

She remembered those words much later.

At Friedrichstraße they would part, and he would continue towards Alexanderplatz. There was never any particular ceremony about their goodbyes. A nod, a smile, sometimes a small wave through the train window.

Neither suggested meeting outside the orchestra.

Perhaps it never occurred to them. Perhaps it did.

A Fairytale Night

The evening of 29 June arrived.

The Waldbühne was filling with thousands of people. Surrounded by tall trees, the amphitheatre seemed almost detached from Berlin. The early summer light lingered above the stage as the audience settled into the curved rows of seating.

The concert, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev, was called A Fairytale Night.

For the musicians, the familiar rituals began: tuning instruments, adjusting music stands, exchanging brief glances, waiting for the conductor.

She noticed him across the orchestra. He was checking his clarinet, apparently absorbed in the small preparations that preceded every performance.

The evening unfolded through music by Prokofiev and Ravel. Then came Elgar’s Salut d’Amour.

The conductor raised his baton.

The violins began.

She had played the melody countless times, but tonight something was different. The sound seemed to rise effortlessly into the summer air, passing through the orchestra with extraordinary delicacy.

The strings carried the familiar melody. Other instruments entered, adding warmth and colour. Then came the clarinet, gently inviting the return of the theme. And the crowd was listening.

She recognised his playing immediately.

There was no need to look towards him. She knew the sound, its restraint, its slight hesitation before resolving into the next phrase.

And when the violins answered, she felt something that had escaped her throughout the rehearsals.

For those few minutes, they were not two people separated by twenty years, by their individual histories, or by the ordinary complications of life. They were musicians sharing an emotion that neither had needed to name.

The music rose, softened, and gradually came to rest.

The audience applauded.

The concert continued, eventually ending with the exuberant Berliner Luft. There were bows, cheers and the wonderful excitement of a successful summer performance.

Yet for her, the most memorable moments had been those few minutes of Elgar.

The Last Train

Later that night, they walked with the departing crowds towards Pichelsberg station.

The train carried them eastwards past Zoologischer Garten, Tiergarten and Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Their instruments rested beside them, as they had on so many journeys before.

Both were exhausted.

But the exhaustion was different tonight. There would be no rehearsal of this programme the following evening, no familiar coffee break, no quiet anticipation of the metro journey home.

Their shared routine had ended.

At Friedrichstraße, she stood to leave.

He helped her lift the violin case.

They exchanged the familiar smile of two people who had spent many evenings together and had somehow never found a reason to meet elsewhere.

Then the doors closed.

He remained inside. She stood on the platform.

As the train moved away, she watched its illuminated windows disappear into the darkness.

The concert had been everything she had hoped for. Yet she wished, strangely, that the evening had not ended.

There are relationships that begin with declarations, grow through promises and eventually seek a future together. And there are others that exist almost entirely in the spaces between ordinary events. They may never acquire a name, yet they leave behind an unmistakable presence.

What had passed between these two musicians was perhaps one such affection.

There was no certainty that these two musicians felt exactly the same thing. Perhaps they did; perhaps each understood the companionship differently. What mattered was not the proof of mutual affection, but the space they had created in which something tender could exist without demanding an explanation.

It is tempting to believe that every affection must eventually be confessed. That feelings become authentic only when spoken, acknowledged and reciprocated. Yet words can also disturb what silence has carefully preserved.

Some silences, undoubtedly, are born of fear. But others may arise from a recognition that not everything beautiful needs to be possessed, explained or carried into the future.

Music offers a remarkable illustration of this possibility. A violin does not ask the clarinet what it means by a phrase. It listens, responds and allows the feeling to pass between them. Neither instrument needs to claim the melody as its own. The beauty exists in their brief alignment.

Perhaps human relationships occasionally work the same way.

Years later, perhaps in different places and at different moments, each might hear Salut d’Amour again. For her, it might bring back the sound of his clarinet; for him, the gentle response of her violin. Both might remember the rehearsals, the paper cups of coffee, the late-night journeys and that unforgettable Berlin summer. Neither would ever know whether the other still remembered. And perhaps that uncertainty was part of its beauty.

Nothing had been declared. Nothing had been promised. There was no unfinished conversation demanding an answer.

Only an affection that had found its fullest expression in music.

Perhaps some love should remain unspoken forever. Not because it is incomplete, but because words would add nothing to what has already been understood.

And perhaps that is why, long after the applause has faded, the music continues.

A personal afterthought

And as I imagine these two musicians, I find myself wishing for something rather unusual.

If I am ever granted a second birth, I would love to be a musician in an orchestra. Not merely someone sitting in the audience, moved by the music, but someone on that stage, experiencing the extraordinary feeling of creating beauty together with others.

To be one voice among many, to listen and be heard, to share emotions without having to explain them, and to experience those few magical moments when individual lives seem to dissolve into a single harmony.

What a wonderful way that would be to live another life.

To be part of an orchestra, to experience the magic of many instruments becoming one, and perhaps, in those fleeting moments of harmony, to discover that the deepest human emotions need no words at all.

Perhaps in my next life, I will be fortunate enough to discover how it feels to make music with others — and to say, without speaking, all that the heart wishes to say.

A note to the reader

This is an imagined story, not an account of real people or events. It is crafted around a real musical performance to explore emotions that we may recognise but seldom have the opportunity to experience; the quiet intimacy of making music together, the affection that grows without intention, and the beauty of feelings that never need to be expressed in words.

Listen while reading

Salut d’Amour — Berliner Philharmoniker, Waldbühne 2019