The very first theater in the region we now know as Romania may well have stood in the Big City. No, not in Bucharest, but in our Big City, less than 15 kilometers from Kleingroßdorf. A museum archive in this city, which likes to bask in the glory of cultural events, supposedly preserves an original theater curtain from the time when the Thalia Theater first graced Transylvanian soil.

In the historic Thalia Hall in the city center, concerts are now the norm, not dramas. Recently, however, a rather dramatic incident occurred when a modern curtain unexpectedly fell, leaving the performing artists wishing it had remained securely locked away in storage like its historical predecessor.

Opportunities to be exposed to music abound in Kleingroßdorf; in fact, it's almost impossible to escape it. Many an evening, Romanian singers wander through the woods and fields, their cheerful folk songs unmistakably audible. To the summer visitor seeking peace and quiet, it's not immediately clear whether this is a club-organized tradition or simply a series of recurring, mobile drinking parties. Both are possible. Both at once.

Several restaurants and bars in the village center also like to turn up the volume on weekends. Music blares, and people slur their speech. Increased consumption of Zuika and Palinka, the traditional Romanian fruit brandies, seems to have a direct effect on the hearing of the consumers: the more decibels flow, the more decibels are apparently needed for them to even be able to hear their beloved Musica Populara.

Weddings, baptisms, and other major celebrations contribute to filling the neighborhood with noise on balmy summer nights. Despite this abundance of acoustic options at home, some residents of Kleingroßdorf occasionally venture into the big city to attend a concert at the Thalia Hall.

Chopin is on the program. The performing ensemble has traveled from Poland, so Chopin is a must. He was certainly good at the occasional polonaise, but that was something different back then. The composer and piano virtuoso, the son of a French father and a Polish mother, spent most of his short life in Warsaw and Paris and was a fervent patriot, incorporating Polish folk music into his work.

Frédéric Chopin composed almost exclusively for the instrument he mastered like few others of his time (with Franz Liszt being perhaps the only other). Despite his virtuosity, he would not have succeeded in Kleingroßdorf, as many of his contemporaries already complained that he played too quietly.

The master left us only two piano concertos, and that probably wasn't because he didn't reach the age of 40. Before the ailing, exceptional artist succumbed to the effects of his tuberculosis, he simply preferred to compose exclusively for his beloved piano; other instruments were merely a nuisance. Or, as the liner notes to a recording of his few orchestral works state: "In these concertos, the orchestra is therefore not a dialogue partner, but merely there to accompany and provide the (sonic) foundation against which the piano virtuoso can advantageously stand out as a figure."

The virtuoso, who had come to the big city accompanied by the Polish orchestra from Warsaw to perform Chopin's Second Piano Concerto in F minor, which confusingly predates his First Piano Concerto in E minor, certainly also wanted to stand out to his advantage (and so it did, but differently than hoped).

Yes, Chopin was quite an odd character; a genius, yet his mind was enigmatic, and he still poses riddles today. Was he depressed, inhibited, or even gay? No one knows for sure (except, of course, his lover George Sand, who found him rather sexually reserved; but we can no longer ask this pleasure-loving cigar smoker), but everyone loves to speculate.

The truth, as so often, remains shrouded in mystery. Just like the Polish orchestra towards the end of the memorable concert, which was heard in the Thalia Hall of the Great City, but then at some point was barely visible.

It is said of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto that it changes from minor to major during the third movement, a shift heralded by a bugle call, which music connoisseurs consider spectacular. And so it was indeed in the Thalia Hall of the Great City. But the spectacle wasn't written in the score, no trumpet blast announced it; it was entirely silent, yet no less fateful, and demanded the utmost composure.

Midway through the third movement, barely noticed at first, a screen—a stage-wide projection surface—began to unfurl from the stage machinery above the orchestra. Relentlessly, agonizingly slowly, yet eventually perceptible to all, it descended to separate the soloist and the conductor from the ensemble—a kind of amputation.

It would have been dramatically effective at this point to write sentences like these: The first violinist nervously glanced over his shoulder. Beads of sweat formed on the forehead of the soloist, who feared for his own safety, but even more so for that of the Steinway grand piano. The conductor tried in vain to stop the screen with her baton.

But nothing of the sort happened. The performance continued stoically and correctly until the very end. At which point the soloist and conductor were completely disconnected from the orchestra; she had previously only been able to project shadows onto the screen with her baton. For minutes, no one backstage could find the right button; no one was able to stop or even reverse the technical disaster.

The enjoyment of the music was not diminished. So much so that the philistine wondered: Why do orchestras even need conductors? But that is just as pointless a question as: Why was Chopin's Second Piano Concerto actually written before the First?