With an ageless spirit, a timeless act and a flawless delivery, musical comic Victor Borge celebrated his 85th birthday precisely as one might expect he would: falling off a piano bench.
No doubt many in the crowd that jammed the Ravinia Festival on Tuesday night have witnessed Borge’s deceptively erudite brand of musical and linguistic humor more than once. Yet the nearly balletic grace with which Borge can slip under a piano, the tongue-twisting dexterity with which he can mangle an everyday phrase, the glorious and rubbery contortions into which he can bend his irrepressibly expressive face never wear out their welcome.
How else to explain the impressive fact that Borge’s show sold out weeks ago, even as any number of more heavily hyped events at Ravinia and other venues have gone begging for customers. Though Borge officially turned 85 in January, this was Chicago’s turn to celebrate, and anyone who treasures literate humor, sophisticated wordplay and, not incidentally, superb pianism, bought their tickets early.
Above all, Borge’s show remains a sublimely civilized entertainment that, for all its apparent buffoonery, examines some rather rarefied rituals of musical culture. The jittery musician who talks incessantly to avoid performing, the reckless page turner who sabotages a recital in midstream, the scattershot pianist who sneaks a bit of “Happy Birthday” into a Chopin waltz-these are the nervous protagonists that Borge portrays.
In so doing, he brings to life every musician’s worst nightmares, which may be why musicians tend to laugh the loudest at Borge concerts. In effect, Borge strips away the veneer of confidence and self-assurance with which performers protect themselves on stage. Without it, Borge seems to be saying, performing artists are just as vulnerable, frightened and silly as the rest of us.
For those who preferred simply to savor the surface humor at work here, Borge provided plenty of material. During an intermissionless, two-hour show, he discussed the musical development of the brilliant Spanish composer El Beethoven, proved that the “Moonlight” Sonata contains the theme to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” and performed Debussy’s masterpiece “Clear the Saloon” (which musicologists erroneously refer to as “Clair de lune”).
Amid the clowning, Borge also managed to perform a few Romantic miniatures a bit more seriously, reaffirming that he commands as beguiling a touch on keyboard as anyone playing today. More important, he dispatched works of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Brahms with a rhythmic freedom and individuality of phrase that, alas, have all but vanished from contemporary pianism.
In the end, this was an 85th birthday celebration that no one in the house will soon forget.
