First blog should be funny and moving and provoke raised expectations from the reader. Given my day and the way it is progressing I’m going to go for vaguely comprehensive grammar and quit whilst even slightly ahead. Am faced today with the prospective goal of organising 24 competitions in regional newspapers in the Derbyshire area. Given I can’t pronounce half of the place names in the vicinity (Uttoxeter…anyone?) and frankly hate speaking to people I don’t know, this is the rough equivalent of getting Schwartzenneger to organise a Press Conference at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
But I digress from the blog title. Last night i was lucky enough to go to my first ever concert at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank. Boyfriend in tow, we arrived at the recently renovated venue and proceeded to waste 10 minutes trying to find the cloakroom, and took our seats in the rear of the stalls. We had paid roughly the price of a cinema ticket for central seats with excellent acoustics and an unimpeded view of the stage. The concert was almost sold out, which I always find surprising given I come from a country (Aus) where most people’s idea of classical music is when they use the Sleeping Beauty theme in a coffee commercial.
The orchestra with pianist Piotr 
Anderszewski played Brahm’s Piano concerto 1 as the first half. I was enthralled by the sound they made and stupefied by the music. I consider my attempts to like Brahms to be both valiant and generous and having given my time and now my money to the experience I can safely call myself One of those People who doesn’t like Brahms (hereafter to be shortened to OOTPWDLB). Nothing personal you understand, but when me AND the boyf both fell asleep countless times in the space of 44 ENDLESS minutes, something’s wrong.Second half was the aforementioned Schostakovitch 5. This was different territory altogether. Conductor Gustavo Dudamel, an indecently attractive Bolivian a little younger than me (argh!), visibly got his act together and lead the orchestra as one possessed by some demon.
I sat forward in my seat the entire time and time after time the hair on my back of my neck stood on end while (what is left of) the hair on my head was blown back by the (at times) alarming volume of sound being hurled at us. The finale of this incalcuably moving piece (full of rejoicing, but the kind which is enforced on you by someone holding a large iron rod saying ‘rejoice or you’re dead’) has to be one of the most phenomenal things I have ever heard live and as it ended, the house leapt to its feet, shouting, whistling, applauding. I couldn’t move at first. In retrospect it was cruel to programme something as relatively insipid as the Brahms immediately before something like the Schostakovitch 5, but then, what CAN you put before that? Almost anything will inevitably be dwarfed by the scale and quality. Any suggestions?
Today am looking through the Philarmonia’s next season and marking any Schostakovitch or Mahler and putting the dates in the diary…so much for controlled spending…
