Classical Music
Dad bought two tickets for Rachmaninov’s Second and Brahms’ Fourth to watch with Mom. He completely forgot he had to teach, so I went in his place. Dad always complained that the SSO was terrible and the only way to get an audience is to invite really famous musicians to play. However, I haven’t listened to them in a long time and accompanied with the fact I’m only completely familiar with 1. Mozart or 2. Beethoven, so I just went in with an open mind.
(I’m not a musical expert and never professed to be one, so if my opinions offend anyone or are completely wrong, you have my sincere apologies).
Opened with Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and I think it was the oddest half hour I’ve had to listen to. The music sounded like a warm sunny afternoon in the countryside, but it was… just noise.
Rachmaninov’s Second got Nikolai Demidenko on the piano. He has very big hands. I truly appreciate the technical prowess of playing Rach. It’s not a single melody that needs to be played; it’s like a thousand tunes all combined into one hand. Which leads me to another thing - why are Mozart and Beethoven so popular?
The well known classical tunes would have to be:
1. Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 (If you haven’t listened to this, where have you been?)
2. Beethoven’s 5th (DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUHN)
3. Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”
4. Beethoven’s 9th (LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAA)
4. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker (Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy to be precise)
I’ll love to add Mozart’s Requiem and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture but judging from a kid’s perspective, I don’t think they’ll listen to any of that unless by chance (I found Mozart’s Requiem after Dad said he never listened to it because it was too dark).
And in the middle of the second movement, it hit me. Every single one of those songs have a set melody that one can play on the piano. The reason why Mozart and Beethoven transcended time (at least until today) was because their music mirrors the type of songs we have now. There must be a set melody and the remaining instruments are accompaniments.
Rach and Brahms, to the person not familiar with classical music, was noise. I cannot count the number of times I drifted off in the middle of Brahms. At one point I thought about sorting_elite and wondering if I had the time and capacity to write out a full application. Then I went through the questions in my head.
Another thought was wondering how awesome it would be to have a robot eye. I spent the next 5 minutes thinking how plausible it would be to have my eye muscles uncoordinated, so my robot eye could swivel everywhere (and record video bootlegs without hassle too!)
Then: “Damn, I wish I had some nifty device to instantly record all these thoughts in my head.”
Anyway, Demidenko was really great. He got two encores and the audience was just clapping their hands off.
Apparantly my family doctor was there too. Mom went to visit her today for pain in her arm and Doc mentioned seeing us there. Hope she didn’t see my 24 yawns.
Got a new camera today! A Nikon Coolpix S7c. Happy~
