The Symphony

I got my first use out of my BSO College Card today. I had a ticket for the matinee and it turned out to be a pretty decent seat. It was off on the side but in row F! The BSO played Debussy's Symphonic Fragments from "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian", Martin's Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion, and String Orcestra, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, Opus 30. I really enjoyed the Debussy piece and I thought that it would be my favorite, but the Rachmaninoff blew me away. Nokolai Lugansky was the pianist for the piece and he ended up taking four curtain calls. He was amazing. He deserved every bit of his standing ovation (and I don't like to give standing ovations--I think that they are rarely deserved and too often given).



The piece is very long (which is part of what makes it so difficult), but if you watch even the first couple minutes you can get a taste for how awesome it is (it doesn't actually start till about a minute in). The concert notes talked about how some of the tunes in Rachmaninoff's piece have a very "familiar quality" to them. I definitely felt that. Actually, in some ways it reminded me of Ennio Morricone's score for The Legend of 1900. I'm curious now where Morricone got his inspiration for that film score--maybe it came from this piece?? And I really loved how Rachmaninoff's piece just feels like the early twentieth century. That's one of those sentences that doesn't really make sense, but it is exactly what I mean. I don't know how to explain it.

I was definitely among the youngest people there. It's funny how the matinee draws two distinctly different crowds: the college age kids, and the retirees. I don't think I saw any regular middle age people there, and really only a handful of college kids. But I suppose it does make sense for a Friday afternoon. I was very pleased that every single person in attendance had proper concert etiquette. And it was just fun to get all dressed up to go to the Symphony, it sounds like such a grown up thing to do. I am super excited to go to the Symphony again.