My First Visit to Carnegie Hall

First of all, I thought the setting couldn’t get any worse compared to the Metropolitan Opera House. Even less leg room and the large steps…I almost fell on the first step down because I didn’t realize how low each step was.  I began to develop more fear of heights, just thinking about flying off the seats, diving towards the bottom floor below. Aside from that, knowing that we would be listening to Beethoven, I was quite excited for the orchestra to begin playing.

I recognized the Beethoven pieces that the orchestra was going to play, but I was interested in comparing the orchestra playing them to listening to them via online. Also, I’m sure many people would recognize a section of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major in the media (such as in random moments on television on shows or commercials).

I was fascinated by how a group of the same instruments created a voice, responding to other group of the same/similar instruments. When all the instruments played together, that synchronicity created one loud voice. In the playbill, I came across a paragraph on Beethoven as the Dionysian Maestro:

“Commentators of the time imply that Beethoven himself tended toward the Dionysian version when conducting [Symphony No. 7]. According to these accounts, Beethoven gyrated about on the podium, bending down deeply for diminuendos and leaping up for crescendos, his podium manner made all the more bizarre by his deafness” (p.30).

I did notice something Dionysian about the symphony, in which I noticed some pandemonium…either the instruments all at once played at a loud, chaotic volume or the group of the same/similar instruments began to play separately, thus creating separate voices.

Overall, the event was a great first-time visit to Carnegie Hall with a great orchestral performance.