The NC Symphony opened their season tonight with the free Pops in the City at the Raleigh Amphitheater. I'm nothing of a music critic, but
slvrstarlight17 requested a top-3 highlights. This is more a brief recount of the whole concert, since it wasn't terribly long.
It opened with Strauss'
Radetzky March, about which I have nothing to say.
Beethoven's
Overture to The Consecration of the House, Op. 124 was very Beethoven and had some really nice tempo changes, especially for the strings section; I particularly liked the brass accents toward the end.
They played three selections from Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake, which were not properly titled and thus named as I remember them:
Act 3 Prelude,
the Swan Theme, and
the Waltz. Of the three, the main theme was my favourite, in large part due to the glockenspiel/oboe melody line melting into a fuller brass takeover.
The conductor, Curry, explained that he likes to incorporate American composers where possible and chose a piece by Ron Nelson,
Savannah River Holiday, for tonight. In all honesty I was surprised how much I enjoyed this piece- each part of the symphony had significant time with the melody line, which was something I
longed for as a flutist in high school band. The opening (and closing) are quite brash and full of brass, but in between every symphonic element carries the melody. I'm also a big fan of the timpani.
There's not much to say about
Raider's March (John Williams), everyone knows it and knows it's great fun. There was a touch of harp in there, which I'd never noticed before and enjoyed, and this was where the trumpet section really shone. They flubbed the beginning of a lot of notes in other compositions, but each of these were cleanly hit and very clear. This was not the case in the 1996 Olympics theme,
Summon the Heroes. The trumpet soloist really struggled through it. And then Amtrack barreled through and distracted everyone.
Unsurprisingly, they get a lot of requests to do music from ALW's
Phantom of the Opera. The medley opened with the
Overture, which was wonderfully heavy on the percussion and transitioned quickly into
Think of Me. One of the highlights of the evening, for me, was the flute solo that became an oboe solo that became a duet with xylophone before the full complement of woodwinds and strings filled in. Then in
Angel of Music it reversed from an oboe solo to a flute solo to a violin solo. This was really just a transition into
the Phantom of the Opera, which was just way too short when it gave way to
All I Ask of You. There was a brief, music-box-like
Masquerade and then we got nearly the full
Music of the Night.
And because this isn't long enough yet, there was a
St Louis Blues (WC Handy) encore. Thankfully they didn't turn the trumpets loose and used a full symphonic arrangement, but anyway I was distracted by the adorable toddler dancing in her light-up sneakers.
So in the end, even though I had to walk through some sketch streets to a parking deck alone at night in downtown Raleigh, I'd go again. The wino couple beside me was just really impressed that I had the initiative to attend an event
on my own, hah. Later this week the Symphony will perform Mozart's
Requiem, October has Tchaikovsky's
5th Symphony, in the spring Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto No.2, and later Mozart's Two Pianos. I'd like to go to any one of those, but we'll just have to see what I have left once I figure out my travel plans.
educated
besotted