Yesterday we went to the Oregon Symphony's rehearsal for "Angela Hewitt Plays Mozart". Angela Hewitt is a pianist. A very beautifully trained pianist. The Symphony started out with Passacaglia by Anton Webern, composed in 1908. Enjoyed that piece a lot. Then Angela came out and they rehearsed Mozart's Concerto No.23 in A major for Piano and Orchestra, K.488, composed sometime between 1784-1786. So impressive. The way her fingers flowed over the keys was so amazing. I would love to be able to play any instrument, but mostly I would love to know how to play the piano, guitar and violin. But alas....I am not musically inclined. Just looking at sheet music makes me sweat. I have no idea what it says. It fascinated me yesterday to hear the conductor say something to the musicians and then they would grab a pencil and write on their sheet music. Or he would stop them and say a certain section was coming in too soon, or going to fast. He would ask them to start at number 160 or something like that, and they would all turn their sheets, and just pick it up. They finished rehearsing with Angela, took a little break and then came back to rehearse about 50 minutes of Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. Don't know why Berlioz spells "fantastique" with a lower case "f" but he did. Some of you may be familiar with a little bit of this composition. It was featured quite prominently in the Julia Robert's movie "Sleeping with the Enemy". One of my favorite watch-any-time-its-on movies! This is the movie where her character is asked if she likes classical music and she responds by saying something like "Anything but Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. It gives me the chills." Well it gave her the chills because her husband that she was hiding from was basically raping her to the music. So yeh...it would give her the chills! I think the part that was played in the movie is either March to the Scaffold or Dream of the Witches' Sabbath. I'm going to see if I can find anything online so that you can hear it. It is the 5th Movement, so its Dream of the Witches' Sabbath.
Starting at about 3:20 in is where the music from the movie will be. I don't think this symphony is playing it very powerful though.
Ok...this one is better. More powerful. It starts at 3:11.
We had a really great day yesterday!
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Wow, what an orchestra! The clarinet close ups reminded me of my high school band. I played the clarinet, my sister, the flute and my younger bro. played the trombone. We were a noisy family! LOL! I was not very good, I preferred singing. I was in the choir too.
Thanks for the history on the "Symphonie fantastique". Very interesting.
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