Concert Review

For my concert review, I went to the BSO on January 14th. I was ecstatic to go see them since they are such an amazing group of musicians. They performed the pieces Overture to the Opera "Euryanthe" by Weber, Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No. 1 in C," the world premier of "Symphony No. 6" by Harbison, and Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," After the old Rogue's Tale, set in rondo from for large orchestra. The piano concerto featured a piano soloist named Leif Ove Andsnes thoughout the 3 movements. I still can't believe how soloists can memorize all their music and play it flawlessly, and this solist became really engrossed with the music, which I think added to my experience of listening to the piece. The symphony featured a mezzo-soprano vocalist named Paula Murrihy who only performed in the first movement of 4, which was based around an ancient poe named "Entering the Temple in Nimes." I read more about the movement in the program notes and I liked being able to read the lyrics while she sang. Overall, I thought that the new symphony was very interesting, modern, and unique and had an endless amount of percussion (vibraphone, glockenspiel, congas, bongo, etc.), but it didn't feel like it had a lot of direction to me, so it was hard to see the cohesiveness between movements. I really enjoyed the piano conerto because the solist and the rest of the orchestra played off each other really well and each of the 3 movements had something a little different. The first one was at a moderate speed and introduced many of the main motifs in the work, the second one was "Largo" and was realaxing, but nonetheless beautiful, and the thrid one tied it all together in a riveting "Rondo: Allegro," although I could definately tell it was one of Beethoven's earlier works and nothing like his 5th Symphony. Overall, I highly enjoyed the concert and hope I can go again soon and would reccomend it to anyone who loves music.

-POTM