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He's a pianist. I didn't know his name before last night either.
Last night, Brilliant Husband took Small Child and me to the Florida Orchestra. (The second-place for the title of this entry was the grossly misleading: "Florida Orchestra Rocks!") SC didn't want to go. SC fidgeted through the first half and slept through the second. Sleeping through the second was kind of like the time one of the younger grad students slept through Apocalypse Now; I know it to be true, but I can't understand how.
First on the program: Shostakovich's Festive Overture, conducted by guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen. She's worth hearing too. I've heard this piece on the radio and probably tv bunches of times, but she made it fresh. She played a lot with the orchestra's dynamics. She was also fun to watch. She didn't take off like Leonard Bernstein, whom I saw when I was in college, but she had some of those quick, sharp, birdlike motions.
Second up: Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. BH sniffs at the performance by the brass, which is apparently consistently the weakest part of the Florida Orchestra. I didn't notice. I feel like such a philistine.
Then it was halftime, and we perambulated. BH considered ordering a scotch, but all they had was Cutty Sark. Last time he got a scotch at the orchestra, he asked what kind they had, and they listed a few. Then they said, "Oh, and there's this other one, but it's not very good." Naturally, he asked what it was. "Laphroaig," they said. It was the same price as the others. He got that.
This is apparently a very funny story, as recognized by people who drink scotch. I just had to Google for the spelling. Do you know how hard it is to find "Laphroaig" when you think it's "Lefroig" or "Lefroag"? I found it, though. Hey, I'm clever. But I digress (gotta keep the past week's food and drink theme going--now I've cursed my husband so that they were out of decent scotch).
After intermission, we sat back down. Sadly, no one had abandoned ship; there was enough talking that I'd hoped some of the older folks would go home early. The two women to my left whispered to each other during the first half; a woman halfway down the row seemed to be seated in the perfect place for her every comment to be broadcast to the entire loge. They remained.
Small Child, however, remained only in body. We sat down, the lights went down, she snatched the program out of my lap and put it on the arm of her seat and put her face down on it. This annoyed me, because I had deliberately been holding the copy that was not crinkled from her trying that in the first half. I wanted one nice copy of the program, and we'd only gotten two; they don't need to slay extra trees so we can each have our own copy.
Stephen Hough came out. He was wearing a tux, and some eye-catching green shoes--loafers, I think, but I was in the last row of the loge. I couldn't see exactly, but they were definitely green. He had a sweat cloth on the piano. He needed it.
BH said later, "By the end of the first movement, I was ready to give the decision to the pianist; I was surprised the piano was still standing!" He was very, very showy. If he'd been anything less than brilliant, I'd be mocking him mercilessly. He exceeded brilliant, however. It wasn't just that his hands were a blur, or that he threw himself around so that I kept expecting him to fall off the bench, or the rest of the showmanship. He simply made amazing music. "Show that piano who's boss!" BH also said later. No question: he did.
Part of it gets to be a three-way: cello vs violin vs piano. That was some throwdown. Piano still won, though we have a heck of a concertmaster, and our lead cellist is nothing to sneeze at either, I discovered.
I'm probably being grossly inappropriate here with sports metaphors. I'm not a musician, really; I don't know music well enough to tell you what it was like. Funnily enough, I don't actually know any sports, either, so that may not be helping. But dang! I've been to lots of concerts with standing ovations. Sometimes, they've even earned it. But we all jumped to our feet at the end--except SC, who was sleeping through people clapping and screaming and hooting and pounding their feet until BH hauled her to her feet, whereupon the program slowly peeled itself off her face before falling to the floor. He had to hold her upright until she was oriented.
I'd have screamed myself, except that I had no air inside me. I just clapped until my arms fell off--not literally, obviously, but I'm thinking today it might have hurt less if they had. My left arm has this awful muscle twitch; I only figured out why a short time ago.
Hough came back after much hollering and sat back down, and people who had started leaving somehow heard to come back in, and they did. He said something that made the people in the first six rows laugh, and then he played a short piece, and then he left amid cheers and screams and other wild noises again.
"Stop that," BH said. "It only encourages him to play more!" Well, this time too many people broke for the exits, and we ran too.
Amazing. See him if he appears with an orchestra near you.
I gotta see if we've got that Tchaik on CD somewhere; I hope the recording won't disappoint me.
Last night, Brilliant Husband took Small Child and me to the Florida Orchestra. (The second-place for the title of this entry was the grossly misleading: "Florida Orchestra Rocks!") SC didn't want to go. SC fidgeted through the first half and slept through the second. Sleeping through the second was kind of like the time one of the younger grad students slept through Apocalypse Now; I know it to be true, but I can't understand how.
First on the program: Shostakovich's Festive Overture, conducted by guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen. She's worth hearing too. I've heard this piece on the radio and probably tv bunches of times, but she made it fresh. She played a lot with the orchestra's dynamics. She was also fun to watch. She didn't take off like Leonard Bernstein, whom I saw when I was in college, but she had some of those quick, sharp, birdlike motions.
Second up: Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. BH sniffs at the performance by the brass, which is apparently consistently the weakest part of the Florida Orchestra. I didn't notice. I feel like such a philistine.
Then it was halftime, and we perambulated. BH considered ordering a scotch, but all they had was Cutty Sark. Last time he got a scotch at the orchestra, he asked what kind they had, and they listed a few. Then they said, "Oh, and there's this other one, but it's not very good." Naturally, he asked what it was. "Laphroaig," they said. It was the same price as the others. He got that.
This is apparently a very funny story, as recognized by people who drink scotch. I just had to Google for the spelling. Do you know how hard it is to find "Laphroaig" when you think it's "Lefroig" or "Lefroag"? I found it, though. Hey, I'm clever. But I digress (gotta keep the past week's food and drink theme going--now I've cursed my husband so that they were out of decent scotch).
After intermission, we sat back down. Sadly, no one had abandoned ship; there was enough talking that I'd hoped some of the older folks would go home early. The two women to my left whispered to each other during the first half; a woman halfway down the row seemed to be seated in the perfect place for her every comment to be broadcast to the entire loge. They remained.
Small Child, however, remained only in body. We sat down, the lights went down, she snatched the program out of my lap and put it on the arm of her seat and put her face down on it. This annoyed me, because I had deliberately been holding the copy that was not crinkled from her trying that in the first half. I wanted one nice copy of the program, and we'd only gotten two; they don't need to slay extra trees so we can each have our own copy.
Stephen Hough came out. He was wearing a tux, and some eye-catching green shoes--loafers, I think, but I was in the last row of the loge. I couldn't see exactly, but they were definitely green. He had a sweat cloth on the piano. He needed it.
BH said later, "By the end of the first movement, I was ready to give the decision to the pianist; I was surprised the piano was still standing!" He was very, very showy. If he'd been anything less than brilliant, I'd be mocking him mercilessly. He exceeded brilliant, however. It wasn't just that his hands were a blur, or that he threw himself around so that I kept expecting him to fall off the bench, or the rest of the showmanship. He simply made amazing music. "Show that piano who's boss!" BH also said later. No question: he did.
Part of it gets to be a three-way: cello vs violin vs piano. That was some throwdown. Piano still won, though we have a heck of a concertmaster, and our lead cellist is nothing to sneeze at either, I discovered.
I'm probably being grossly inappropriate here with sports metaphors. I'm not a musician, really; I don't know music well enough to tell you what it was like. Funnily enough, I don't actually know any sports, either, so that may not be helping. But dang! I've been to lots of concerts with standing ovations. Sometimes, they've even earned it. But we all jumped to our feet at the end--except SC, who was sleeping through people clapping and screaming and hooting and pounding their feet until BH hauled her to her feet, whereupon the program slowly peeled itself off her face before falling to the floor. He had to hold her upright until she was oriented.
I'd have screamed myself, except that I had no air inside me. I just clapped until my arms fell off--not literally, obviously, but I'm thinking today it might have hurt less if they had. My left arm has this awful muscle twitch; I only figured out why a short time ago.
Hough came back after much hollering and sat back down, and people who had started leaving somehow heard to come back in, and they did. He said something that made the people in the first six rows laugh, and then he played a short piece, and then he left amid cheers and screams and other wild noises again.
"Stop that," BH said. "It only encourages him to play more!" Well, this time too many people broke for the exits, and we ran too.
Amazing. See him if he appears with an orchestra near you.
I gotta see if we've got that Tchaik on CD somewhere; I hope the recording won't disappoint me.