hall 21 February 2010
I got brought by Himself to a concert at the National Concert Hall here in Dublin (yup, am here as there are MARGINALLY less distractions for me than elsewhere in the world…) to hear some Fleishmann, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky (forgive the spellings of all 3 of those…). He has become quite the regular at the recitals and loves to sit in the balcony, which is above and behind the orchestra. Having sat other places in the hall I must say I love these seats too. They are, if you like, the Paupers places as they are the cheapest in the house but tremendous because 1) they’re recession beaters and 2) you can see the musicians and what they do so clearly, down to the dots they’re reading from their scores. Wonderful. Although the Fleishmann was quite modernist German music I liked it and it seemed quite filmic to me. A virtuoso (hottie) Venezualan pianist (Sergio Tiempo?) played the Rachmaninov piece which was based on Paganini variations and is used as the theme to the South Bank Show – I have never seen such elegant hands, nor such quick moving ones – amazing. The final piece was a bit ‘Honours Course’ for me and I wasn’t sure what I felt about it till the end when the organ kicked in and it got very big and lush and I am a bit of a sucker for that. Even so, it was good stuff to daydream to and I made some useful book decisions so it incorporated work in a very positive way. Trouble was we met 2 great friends I hadn’t seen in ages too and between the night out, the music, the laughter and chat, I was completely over stimulated and didn’t get to sleep till 3am (had to do the getting up to have tea trick – also did a bit of writing research…which added to the stimulation and brainwhizzery). Still, good complaints, eh? And it meant I felt no guilt having that hour’s snooze this afternoon either – RESULT!
