Orchestra

I should have written this last night after the concert, but being sick has pushed back all my plans a bit...

First and foremost, I'd like to point out that the only things I have to compare this concert to are public school band concerts and the symphony orcehestra in Denver.

My first thought was that the concert lacked a level of formality that I had expected from such an event. Mostly because of the actions of the people in the symphony. For some reason, it seems that guys are held to a much higher standard than girls when it comes to dress. Some of the girls weren't dressed anywhere near the suits the guys wore. Also, as much as I love shaggy hair, if you're performing in an event like this, comb it down. And the people who couldn't cross their legs and were slouching the whole time really stood out next to the more "professional" looking people.

One more quick rant...the audience didn't seem very "professional" either. The girl next to me, the one who was clapping randomly, wouldn't stop texting ever. Also the women in from of me was kniting. Really? These people have spent countless hours working on perfecting the music for this concert. Don't they deserve a better audience? And the people who left early? I'd just want to ask them why, especially those in our class who left... Maybe they didn't know it was intermission...?

Now on to the actual concert and not my ranting. The first peice of music didn't really strike me as anything special. While it wasn't bad, I didn't think it was great either, just kinda vanilla... But then again, it was being played with renound musicians work, so comparing it to these might not be quite fair. Also, I don't really get why the soloists went down on that elevator/stage thing. It seems like you wouldn't want your soloists to be disapearing from sight, it kind of takes away from the impact, not to mention it just felt kind of wierd. It seemed like they just wanted to use the elevator but didn't really think it threw that much.

The second peice of music was my favorite. I think this might just be because the soloist came and talked to us. The thing that amazed me was that she didn't really just have "a" solo, but pretty much played solo parts through the entire peice, which was quite long. I have to say, I really liked her dress... At first she seemed nervous, kind of swaying back and forth like she would pass out of somthing. Then I realized you could preactically see the music flowing in and out of her because she just knew it so well, even the parts that she didn't play. I also think that her telling us more about the music and the meanings behind the different parts really helped quite a bit.

The third peice was interesting. There were some parts I found myself getting really bored (the cold medicine was making it hard to pay attention anyways though...) and some parts where I felt kinda like it was a movie set with a huge grand symphony playing.

I don't really feel comfortable critiqing the music, as I don't really know how to play anything. It sounded great though, and was a million times better than anything I could have done.