concert review: Fremont Symphony
Apr. 1st, 2014 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSo a couple quick rounds of applause after the end of Haydn's Creation, B. and I ducked out of the auditorium in San Jose, I drove her home, and then darted off to Fremont for a concert there. This wouldn't have been possible to do in the available 90 minutes without the absence of traffic of a quiet Sunday eve.
It'd been several years since I'd heard the Fremont Symphony, because it'd been several years since it played a program I felt like going out of my way to hear. I'd come back now in response to a command from my editor, go forth and review. I remembered Fremont as an excellent community (non-professional) orchestra, though, more reliable than the Redwood Symphony and with more character than the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, and so it proved.
Ohlone College, like Foothill, is built on a steep hillside, and has equally confusing parking. In this case, every lot within reasonable distance of the hall was labeled "Staff Only," with no exceptions for evenings or weekends noted on the signs. I had to hope there'd be no problems.
The auditorium had unreasonably good acoustics for something that small, and the musicians gave scintillating performances of Dvorak's Cello Concerto, a work I can usually live without, and Copland's Billy the Kid, which has gotten kind of lost over the years behind Appalachian Spring and Rodeo. As well as other less usual kinds of stuff, described in the review.
Which leaves me with only one question: why, if the first piece on the program involves playing a video, don't you test it out in the auditorium immediately before letting the audience in, and perhaps avoiding the inevitable 15-minute delay in the performance while you figure out why your equipment isn't working?
It'd been several years since I'd heard the Fremont Symphony, because it'd been several years since it played a program I felt like going out of my way to hear. I'd come back now in response to a command from my editor, go forth and review. I remembered Fremont as an excellent community (non-professional) orchestra, though, more reliable than the Redwood Symphony and with more character than the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, and so it proved.
Ohlone College, like Foothill, is built on a steep hillside, and has equally confusing parking. In this case, every lot within reasonable distance of the hall was labeled "Staff Only," with no exceptions for evenings or weekends noted on the signs. I had to hope there'd be no problems.
The auditorium had unreasonably good acoustics for something that small, and the musicians gave scintillating performances of Dvorak's Cello Concerto, a work I can usually live without, and Copland's Billy the Kid, which has gotten kind of lost over the years behind Appalachian Spring and Rodeo. As well as other less usual kinds of stuff, described in the review.
Which leaves me with only one question: why, if the first piece on the program involves playing a video, don't you test it out in the auditorium immediately before letting the audience in, and perhaps avoiding the inevitable 15-minute delay in the performance while you figure out why your equipment isn't working?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-04-01 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-03 05:54 am (UTC)-MTD/neb