Moth Music

It's the 2009 ABC Young Performers Award Grand Final. The stage is brilliant with a crimson and bone backdrop and crimson and brain cell wings. The audience is sitting on cerise seats, with their feet resting on polished wooden boards.

The first young performer Bo An Lu begins his piece, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One. Two white moths fly into the stage space, and hover above the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven!! whispers Moth One. No silly, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto. Weeee! isn't it lovely! cries Moth Two, sailing up into a square of concentrated light. Oowaah! It's HOT! And he sails down again twisting and fluttering his wings on a draft of dazzling notes. Moth One floats gently upwards and swings on an invisible rope, then drops in a breathtaking dive to somewhere behind the first cello.

Now here comes performer number two, David Papp, to play the Oboe Concerto by Martinu. Oooh! Exhilarating! shouts Moth One, dancing madly back and forth before rising with polka-like movements over the heads of the winds. Don't get too excited, the lights are really hot now, warns Moth Two, before being carried away himself in an ecstasy of soulful bucolic bliss. Watch out!!! Too late! Moth One disappears inside the bright square of light and immediately divebombs to the floor landing ignominiously at the feet of the conductor. Followed, moments later, by Moth Two. Sadly there are no moths dancing to the glittering second movement of Martinu's Oboe Concerto.

Finally Ji Won Kim takes the stage. She begins to play the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The two moths ressurrect themselves, and rise sinuously towards the lights but stop short of being sizzled. They dance to the beautiful and heartbreaking notes. They do not hear the deeper oceanic notes played by the ASO. They do not listen to the sounds of polar bears thumping and lumbering from side to side in their own clumsy dance. No, they are in love with the wild heavenly notes emanating from the violin of Ji Won Kim. They think that she will win.

Now it is judging time. The ASO play Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream. The moths are nowhere to be seen. They are somewhere behind the curtain, listening to the conference of the adjudicators.

This is a very difficult decision, says one of the adjudicators. It is, says another. But I am going for Ji Won Kim. I find moths to be an invaluable guide.