The concert was pretty enjoyable. A recap in bullet-point form...
* I'm always surprised at how contemporary Chopin sounds.
* Ethan Hawke actually did a nice job tonight filling the shoes of original beat-poet-narrator Alan Ginsberg, although he did remind me how much I really, really hate poetry.
* The newly commissioned piece at the center of tonight's performance was not by Philip Glass at all, but by some young female composer. The movements alternated between piano + male baritone singer, and solo violin. Now, first of all... I can handle about 3 minutes of solo violin before it starts to sound like something between fingernails-on-a-blackboard and party-balloon-squeak-fart noises. (If you know what I mean.) Second of all, I just really, really have little patience for operatic singing. I kept wishing the guy would shut up so I could hear the piano.
* As much as I enjoy watching Philip Glass play Philip Glass, I'm always amazed at what a MUCH better piano the other performers (the "professional" piano players) are. It makes me feel much better about composing things on GarageBand that I can't actually play in realtime without making mistakes. If Philip Glass can get other people to perform his compositions that he can't play himself without fucking up,. then I can do the same thing with a computer, dammit.
* The piece from Glass's new album "A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close" was really nice. I may have to buy the album if it's all solo piano.
* I need to buy the sheet music for Glass's Piano Etude #2. I think I could play it.
* Has anyone ever heard of a composer named "Messaien"? I hadn't, but the piece they played was very interesting. Modern, but listenable. (Despite the fingernail-squeak-farting of the violin. It's not as bad with accompaniment.)
* The finale from "Einstein on the Beach"? Fucking sublime. Seriously. Did I look like an idiot for singing along? ("1...2...3...4... (-)...2...3...4...5...6 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...") I don't even care. I know the whole work pretty well. I used to listen to it in the car beginning-to-end when I would drive from Williamsburg home to Baltimore during grad school. The finale is even more enjoyable when you haven't been forced to sit through the preceding 3 and a half hours!
* The mezzo-soprano who sang in the finale and one of the other pieces...? Hot!
* (in other hotness news) Crowd watching is always fun as well. Who the hell wears thigh-high leather boots to a classical music concert? Good God Damn...
* (and...) One may joke about German being a harsh and unattractive language, but when spoken by two attractive single young women sitting next to you in a concert... it can be pretty fucking hypnotic.
* (now back to the MUSIC...) A look at the Lincoln Center program reveals that in October, The London Symphony is performing all nine Beethoven symphonies over 5 nights. Fucking awesome. As much as I'd like to go to the whole series, I somehow doubt my wife would appreciate me not seeing my children for a week to do so. But they are performing #1 and #7 - my two favorites - on the same night! The day after my birthday!! Yay! A present for me!
So... that's that. It's 11:30 now and I'm at the Secaucus Junction train station. One problem with living out in the fucking mountains where I do... once rush hour is over, the trains leave like... once every 3 hours. So I got here at 10:50 and the next train leaves at 12:11. I'll get home at 2:30 in the fucking morning. Yeah. Kinda sucks.
To recap the rest of the day... I did indeed get all my exams graded, which fills me with... ok, maybe not "glee" but at least a deep, Buddha-like calm. I still have a decent-sized stack of homeworks to work on, but at least I've met my short-term goal. I didn't do much of the other stuff I was planning to do. The grading took more time than I thought, and my coworker wasn't there to take out to lunch, so I just went by myself to Pizzeria Uno around 3:00. Then back to my office to finish the grading, up to the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble for an hour... nothing too exciting.
Crap. I'm not sure my laptop is gonna last all the way home with this hour-at-the-train-station beforehand. Maybe I should go sit on the floor over there and plug in.
I was just going to write about how I'm really not as tired as one might expect... and then it just snuck up one me... just like that.... just because I thought it. Stupid brain...
No comments:
Post a Comment