George kindly gave us his tickets to last night's symphony performance which turned out to be just what we needed.
My knowledge of orchestral music falls squarely between jack and diddly squat, so I don't have the refined perspective of an aficionado. Nonetheless, here's my six point review of the evening:
(1) I think the interior of the concert hall was uninspiring and already seems dated,
(2) Rite of Spring kicked ass and I can see why it provoked protests at it's debut,
(3) John Harbison's Symphony No. 4, which premiered this week, was stunningly beautiful,
(4) Dia related each piece to a film--"I need to see something"--and thought the Harbison symphony was the soundtrack to an undiscovered Hitchcock reel,
(5) I related to each piece by unintentionally sampling it and constructing mental tape loops of small chunks of sound, and
(6) I think it's crap that anyone would get bent out of shape by me silently taking a low resolution after performance camera phone snapshot of the orchestra.
Twas a fun and relaxing date night. Thanks George!
you went to a performance of Le Sacre du Printemps!! Its my all time favorite, the muscial marking of Modernity (unless you credit Debussy lApres midi d'un faune which i don't) Your blog works in Tajikistan.
p.
Posted by: phil | Tuesday, June 22, 2004 at 02:00