Beethoven's Fifth and My First.

Last Saturday, I ventured to do something I had stopped doing for quite some time.  Open an hitherto unopened window.  And then enjoy the new vista.

I attended a concert in Western Classical Music at the Mayo Civic Center Theater in Rochester.

It was a concert featuring Beethoven's Fifth symphony, the beginning of which has  been used for great effect in many a dramatic situations.

I began listening to western classicals more intently during my long to and fro drives to La Crosse. Listening to the Minnesota Public Radio became a habit. My ear became accustomed to the concertos and symphonies played on throughout.  In fact so much that my first instincts after sitting in the car, apart from confirming the position of the rearview mirror, were to confirm I was on FM 91.7 . This is not to say that I understood the technicalities at all, but simply that I used to like listening to these classical strains. 

I recently got a 'Classical Music For Dummies' audiobookfrom the Public Library so that I could make some sense of these euphonious soundwaves hitting my eardrums. Then drew my own conclusions. I concluded  Bianca Castafiore, Captain Haddock's alleged love-interest was probably the best example of a 'Soprano' that I knew. I concluded that an' Alto' was much more that the car I had back in Bangalore. It now also referred to instrumental families or choral singers which had the second highest range of frequencies below those of sopranos. Baritone, bass and tenor and treble now had meanings in a wider context of my new-found knowledge.

The Dummies tape also told me there was always a social before the actual performance. A chance to mingle with the graceful and some very beautiful attendees in my case. Apart from a brief introduction of the performace from the conductor himself, What made my evening till then, was some great complimentary champagne. Champagne is great. Complimentary Champagne is greater still.

The concert was performed by the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale. The evenings performace had 3 parts. First was Beethoven's Concerto N0. 4. Second was the Choral Fantasy, and the third being the famous Symphony No.5.  The reason that you see numbers rather than actual names for these compositions, is that publishers then preferred simple numerical nomenclature.

The Evening was the 200th Anniversary of Beetoven's public performance of the same in a huge concert. 200 years ago, the performance was not that successful due to various factors. However today's was a good success. Horacio Nuguid was the lead pianist, who performed impeccably. The position of the piano was different from its traditional position on a concert stage, in order to adjust to the specifc acoustics of this hall. 

Since childhood, I was always  fascinated by concerts like those I saw on TV performed by Zubin Mehta in India. Today was my chance to see it and know more about it. Names of conducterslike  Zubin Mehta or composers like Beethoven or Mozart or Vivaldi make more sense now. What must be comforting to the likes of Zubin Mehta :-)  is that I understood that the conductors of an orchester have much to more do and undertand that just stand there waving a stick at everybody. They must also have an understanding of all the musical instruments in the concert, a great understanding of the pieces they are to play,  coordinate all the players egos and acoustic outputs at all the serial performances. All the while making sure he interprets the great composers correctly, whose work they are about to bring out.

Amongst the music I have heard, must say that I happen to like Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and the festival choral Carol of the Bells, though of course these were not performed here.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Saturday Evening. Especially My Nth Champagne, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and my First Concert.