Sunday Debbie and I celebrated our 23rd Anniversary, May 18 1985 was our wedding date.
Our final New Jersey Symphony concert for the season was at
NJPAC, our favorite venue. As usual we cut it pretty close but got there right at 3:00, and our seats (1st Tier Box B on the left side of the hall) were luckily close to the entry doors. View wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. We are usually in the right side boxes, from which you can see all but the double-basses. From the left side we couldn't see the percussion, nor the tympanist, who is one of our favorites to watch.
The concert started with
Steinberg's orchestration of the
Busoni Piano arrangement of Bach's
Chaconne in D minor from the 2
nd Partita for unaccompanied violin. This is one of my very favorite pieces of music, known to me through Andres Segovia who transcribed it for guitar. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNXlslzL8EY 2
nd half:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRhorozjEEg&feature=related
I LOVED the
Steinberg arrangement, how the music flowed from section to section and his choices of instrumentation to bring out the various parts. I had one misgiving, was that between the opening minor and major variations, and the end of the major into the closing minor, there is a suspended chord without the 3rd, leaving tonal ambiguity which is then resolved when the next set of variations begins. Maestro
Jarvi went straight into the following set in strict tempo, without pausing on this note, which can be a very dramatic pause.
The Haydn 99
th Symphony was nice. I was humming a tune from it as I walked out at intermission but it now escapes me.
Jarvi obviously loves Haydn, but it is a bit restrained for my taste.
The 2
nd half was the mighty Shostakovitch 5
th Symphony. My dear departed friend from
Springdale Sol Davidson gave me a 2 disk set for my 40
th birthday, the
Shostakovitch 1st and 7
th Symphonies. I still remember him saying, with that ever-present twinkle in his eye, "Forty! Well NOW you are ready for
Shostakovitch!" I miss Sol. And I happened to know a fair amount about the 5
th as we studied it at NYU in my Form and Analysis music class. I even have a recording, on vinyl, unplayable with my present setup.
Well this was some very interesting music, written for a very large orchestra with a full complement of percussion, woodwinds, brass, harp, even piano (as an orchestral, not solo, instrument). It wasn't quite as large an orchestra as Mahler used on his 2
nd in December but nearly so. There were some very interesting and unusual sounds that he produces. Every now and then the music turns into this
cacophonous "circus" sound that Shostakovitch included, perhaps to satisfy the Stalinist regime under which he had to compose. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KrnHqg3U7Q&feature=related for a backgrounder.
I don't much care for those measures but there is such a wealth of great musical material that it is easy to overlook the "caricatures". Here is a
youtube of the finale which will give you a sense of what I'm talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogJFXqYEYd8After the concert we went to
Forno of Spain, our favorite of the Newark
Ironbound restaurants. After a short wait at the bar, we went into the dining room and had a sumptuous meal. I had a 36 ounce BONELESS Sirloin steak, that was just incredible. I will be digesting that for a week! It was over the top! Debbie had Chicken and Shrimp
Francaise which was delicious. Huge portions. And very reasonable, as the entrees include potatoes, mixed veggies and
Spanish saffron rice.
We got home about 9PM and watched this week's
Netflix - Chuck and Larry - which allowed us to laugh out the last hours of our Anniversary Day.