Categories: music
Date: 15 February 2010 10:16:11
Events conspired, (TOH's b'day/valentines day/a student discount on the tickets), to find me somewhere I never expected to find myself yesterday.....watching a classical concert, The London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Sage to be exact. Now those who know me will be laughing, particularly if they have heard me doing my "I don't do classical" line. Fact is I do everything from folk and country through to thrash metal and punk with a bit of happy hardcore in between but I don't do soul or classical. As you will have gathered though, TOH does and as yesterday was all about her not me......well I found myself in a foreign land.
The first bits of the programme were by Ravel, "Daphnis et Chloe": Suite no 2 and then "Valses nobles et sentimentales". These showed me that the orchestra were rather good, but I have to admit I got a bit bored. I am used to music which lasts 3 minutes or less. I like stuff where you can have a burst of jumping about or chilling out and then on to something else, (it's why the alot of the trance and trip-hop stuff never appealed). Anyway it was plesant enough and I didn't need to resort to putting in the ear plugs TOH had bought for me to discreetly go and put in if I really couldn't bear it.
Then they pushed two pianos onto the centre of the stage and we got Poulenc's Concerto for two pianos played by Ronald Brautigam and Melvyn Tan aswell as the rest of the orchestra. My evening was transformed for a while. It was amazing, I loved it. I didn't realise that you could get comedy in classical music. I found myself leaning forward entranced, particularly by Tan who I can best describe as coming across like the love child of Gok Wan and Nigel Kennedy. This doesn't just mean he was a south Asian gent who did classical. It means he was flamboyant and amazingly dressed in a smart black suit and was having fun with classical music. He was a showman who was there to entertain as well as play some kick ass classical.
After the interval the pianos had disappeared unfortunately. I closed my eyes and was in that place, not quite asleep, where the music became background music for my thoughts. Only occassionally did the kettle drums or the unnearving silence between movements where I thought people should be clapping but there was just silence bring me back to full attention of my surroundings. I gather from TOH who knows about these things, and the enthusiastic clapping and "bravo"'s of those around me that Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune and La mer were played rather well.
All in all not a bad evening, and as I say for a while I even enjoyed it for more reasons than just getting to chill with TOH.