Ahhh, where shall I start?

I was anticipating that this night would be a great night. It definitely was. Like Pun, this is my first time stepping into the Carnegie Hall. I couldn’t stop looking around at the architecture of the place. The architecture was simple, everything was very smooth and rounded, and surprisingly I didn’t see a fancy chandelier hanging down from the middle of the hall. This all adds up and concurs with the fact that Carnegie Hall has one of best acoustics of any halls. It was probably one of the nicest halls I’ve seen as well. Even with seats up in the balcony everything sounded very crystal clear 🙂

On to the pieces: I think all the performances were executed very well, though I personally preferred the first half of the performance prior to the intermission.

Henry Purcell’s Suite from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Appetizer! What a great way to start! The pieces were very hip and flow very nicely for me. It reminds me of the Bach Invention pieces. In those pieces, the right hand would usually play a part, and the left hand would play the same part after the right hand stopped while the right hand accompanied, and so on. It has a back and forth feel, and thats how I felt when I heard the Purcell piece. I especially like these two, i-I and ii-VII. Here is the full suite for the orchestra:

And here is ii-VII:

Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest, Op. 18: This piece was probably the main course! Tchaikovsky was extremely talented in creating this piece, and it was executed very well by our conductor Pablo Heras-Casado! I especially enjoyed the sudden soft and loudness of the piece, which makes me feel very calm one minute, while alert the next! I was especially attention to the violinist, who’s bow was flickering at the speed of light at one point in the piece. This piece reminded me another piece that I enjoy hearing as well, Robert W. Smith’s The Divine Comedy: I. Inferno. This piece is based on Dante’s Inferno, and creates a auditory stimuli through how Dante perceived hell was like. Here is a performance of the piece (this is played by a band, not an orchestra):

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Piccola Musica Notturna: I don’t really have much to say. The piece was executed fine, but I didn’t feel that this piece was as rich as the others, especially the first 2.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I don’t know how I feel about this piece. The sing along part was definitely a plus, plus the ending was probably the best part about this piece. I guess this piece was the long and fulfilling dessert the finished the course of dinner!

Ahh, how can we forget, crazy man in front of the hall.

Just when we thought the night was over, a random man, presumably drunk, approached us and started talking to me. No fear, the guy just was trying to make new friends, gave me a fist pound, and talk about the cops of Connecticut, some cause and affect, and murmured some other stuff. Thanks for the reassurance guys LOL

And then, diner after diner, time for some diner food! 😀

~Christopher Chong