Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Royal Philarmonic Orchestra London

Tonight I went with Emilie, her father, Cecile and Yvain to a performance by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Montreux.












The performance included works by Tchaikovski (Polonaise, from Eugene Onegin), Liszt (Piano Concerto n° 2 in A Major) and Berlioz (Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14). And if you share the extremely limited knowledge of classical music that I have, nothing in the prior sentence stands out at first glance aside from perhaps the name Tchaïkovski.


But then came the 5th movement of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. And if you’ve ever seen Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia Roberts you will definitely recognize the music. It’s the dark sequence that typically plays whenever the abusive husband is in the scene.


A lighter moment of the evening occurred when there was a brief pause in one of the performances and some poor guy (or girl) assumed that it was an appropriate time to clap. Unfortunately, it apparently wasn’t. I genuinely felt sorry for him/her given that it was very difficult for a casual observer (or for me, at least) to tell when the “end” for each performance was. I simply waited for others to clap first given my general ignorance.

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