Concert at Walt Disney Hall

Well...the building is quite beautifully curve-ful =]

The concert was hmmmm... not what I expected.

Firstly, they cancelled Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto in c minor because the pianist was sick.

Yeah, that was a huge bummer.

The Russian Easter Overture was delightful in it's celebration of (obviously) Easter. I was impressed with the oneness in the strings section, the violin section sounded like one instrument! But it wasn't piercingly beautiful. (For that we'd have to listen to Rach's Vespers)

Next was Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien, which was enjoyable. (To be honest, when I listen to a piece for the first time, I don't remember any of it afterward. Like not one bit, so this post is going to be woefully inept as I was staking all my hopes on the Piano Concerto. I'm probably going to go by my impressions, which you should probably not trust.) During this piece I experienced something similar to what I felt during Brahm's First Symphony. This idea of roundness and an association with curves and flowing streams. Yeah, go read Edmund Burke. Ha-ha.

The Borodin Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor .......yeah. Nothing...nada. Didn't feel a thing. (sorry!)

Now the Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3. =] Oh boy, the first part, Elegie was sweet and lyrically pleasing, I felt one throb of lyrical ecstacy (albeit quite a tame one) during this part. (Lyricaly ecstacy meters usually go crazy during the second theme of Rach 2, darn, I really wanted to hear it live) The Valse melancolique was somber as the title implies. Ha, the Scherzo was funny because in the middle of it, the Dies Irae (if you don't know what I'm refering to, looking in my blog archive for Dies Irae) theme pops up kind of out of nowhere. =] It was a well orchestrated version.
Ooooh, and my favorite part of the concert, the Finale: Tema con variazioni! This part was quite exciting with some pretty virtuosic jamming on the part of the first violinist. Yes, I felt twice the tinge of Lyrical Ecstacy (again, quite tame compared to the Joyful Ecstacy in Rach 2).

Ha, I invented new terms. =]

Anyway, don't listen to me. Go listen to Rachmaninoff, Elgar, Tchaikovsky, etc. But choose wisely. There is such a thing as bad Classical Concert music.