Saturday, March 26, 2011
It Happened Again!
There I was, sitting in our little First Tier Davies Hall seats, after a tiring day - the combination of the hills of my new home town, walking miles through Costco to stock up for the in-laws' visit, and my gym workouts had squashed me flat, but no way was I going to NOT go to the Symphony, so there I was, sitting.
The house was packed - which it is not always - so I figured the Dvorak New World Symphony had a name that attracted audiences, and the SF Symphony had been smart to program it . Was it possible that the world of symphonic music had it's "Beauty and the Beast" sure-fire programming buzz names? Just like theater? Of course they do...and it looked like the Dvorak piece was such a one....so there we sat...
The lights dimmed, and the band - a small one for the first act of Mozart violin music - tuned up, looking great and arranged rather unusually, with the strings concentrated in different formations than I was used to seeing. Out walked Herbert Blomstedt, their venerable conductor emeritus and then a pretty slender woman in a lovely one strap gown, with an 18th century Stradivarius, and off we went into the land of Mozart played brilliantly by the astonishing Arabella Steinbach. Oh my god, she was amazing! Such virtuoso playing, such skill and dexterity. Such delicacy of pitch! And sweet sweet sweetness of tone. It was heavenly, and stirring.....it sure did wake me up and make me glad to be alive!
THEN: after she stunned us further with an encore , unplanned (except by the wily old conductor who seems to believe in giving the people what they want, even if they think they want to go out to the intermission and go to the bathroom...he knows they really came for the music)....well, she was a one-woman orchestra on that single slender fiddle...it was like nothing I've every heard before.
In this lifetime, I will never be as good at anything as that woman is at the age of 28 on her violin. Maybe next lifetime, I can start studying something (besides eating) at age three. Brava Annabella Steinbach!
THEN - after that intermission - the SF Symphony Orchestra played in full force (it was a large and gorgeous sound coming from the full complement of musicians) the most rousing Dvorak: The New World Symphony! GET OUT OF THE WAY: it was stunning. Glorious. Moving. Huge sound. Sweet soft dynamics. Utterly right. This orchestra was very proud to show us what it is made of, and I for one, was deeply grateful we were there to hear it. But so were all the thousand others. The encore was again unexpected, but this Herbert Blomstedt knows his audience, and before we could catch out breath he was off into some Smetana anthem or other and the people were frenzied with appreciation! Such applause and cheering. It was an evening you want to have when you go the Symphony.You want this kind of life-changing sound to come at you from all around you.
It was positively tribal.
And there's another concert - Tchaikovsky piano music!- next week...we will take Peter's folks!
I am content.
The house was packed - which it is not always - so I figured the Dvorak New World Symphony had a name that attracted audiences, and the SF Symphony had been smart to program it . Was it possible that the world of symphonic music had it's "Beauty and the Beast" sure-fire programming buzz names? Just like theater? Of course they do...and it looked like the Dvorak piece was such a one....so there we sat...
The lights dimmed, and the band - a small one for the first act of Mozart violin music - tuned up, looking great and arranged rather unusually, with the strings concentrated in different formations than I was used to seeing. Out walked Herbert Blomstedt, their venerable conductor emeritus and then a pretty slender woman in a lovely one strap gown, with an 18th century Stradivarius, and off we went into the land of Mozart played brilliantly by the astonishing Arabella Steinbach. Oh my god, she was amazing! Such virtuoso playing, such skill and dexterity. Such delicacy of pitch! And sweet sweet sweetness of tone. It was heavenly, and stirring.....it sure did wake me up and make me glad to be alive!
THEN: after she stunned us further with an encore , unplanned (except by the wily old conductor who seems to believe in giving the people what they want, even if they think they want to go out to the intermission and go to the bathroom...he knows they really came for the music)....well, she was a one-woman orchestra on that single slender fiddle...it was like nothing I've every heard before.
In this lifetime, I will never be as good at anything as that woman is at the age of 28 on her violin. Maybe next lifetime, I can start studying something (besides eating) at age three. Brava Annabella Steinbach!
THEN - after that intermission - the SF Symphony Orchestra played in full force (it was a large and gorgeous sound coming from the full complement of musicians) the most rousing Dvorak: The New World Symphony! GET OUT OF THE WAY: it was stunning. Glorious. Moving. Huge sound. Sweet soft dynamics. Utterly right. This orchestra was very proud to show us what it is made of, and I for one, was deeply grateful we were there to hear it. But so were all the thousand others. The encore was again unexpected, but this Herbert Blomstedt knows his audience, and before we could catch out breath he was off into some Smetana anthem or other and the people were frenzied with appreciation! Such applause and cheering. It was an evening you want to have when you go the Symphony.You want this kind of life-changing sound to come at you from all around you.
It was positively tribal.
And there's another concert - Tchaikovsky piano music!- next week...we will take Peter's folks!
I am content.
Labels: SF Symphony
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