concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley

[calimac]

I hope my editors correct soon the bobble they made in the headline over the pianist's name [ETA: they did], but here's my latest review.

As often, I wish my mother were still here to have attended this with me, for she was a great fan of the Franck Symphony, a piece that doesn't get played much, and would have enjoyed this interpretation. I was the first on my feet after the piece ended. Everybody had jumped up after the piano concerto, and that was impressive too, but I know true greatness when I hear it, even if it's not so flashy.

For once I'm grateful for the word count restrictions, for this forced me to delete an awkward extension of the already peculiar comparison of Nakamatsu's pianism to an oil driller. I was going to bring up how he'd become famous by winning the Van Cliburn Competition, and then mention how Cliburn was from the oil-drilling part of East Texas (it's true: there's a display of derricks occupying part of his home town's downtown), but ... nah, better not.

I'd rushed down to the concert after coming home from Forbidden Broadway, passing through the by now quiet scene of Thursday's Trump riots, only to find some kind of street fair occupying the theatre's street and the aftermath of a high-school graduation pouring out of the hall itself, so I immediately drove to a place where, though several blocks away, I've never failed to find a free parking space no matter how full downtown San Jose is. Am I going to reveal its location? No! I hope it lasts longer than my secret parking stashes in San Francisco have.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

My siblings and I keep coming back to music we'd like to discuss with our dad, conversations we'd like to have now that he'd enjoy. It's good to be reminded, as your reference to your mother reminds me, that we only know he'd enjoy those conversations, that music, because we had those conversations many times over the years, about music we'd heard with and without him. The last time he visited me, we heard a small, scrappy community orchestra give a spirited reading of Beethoven's First; the last time I talked with him, I told him about a performance of Prokofiev's violin concerto, and he told me how much he looked forward to hearing his swing band play one more time. He didn't get to hear that -- he slept through the band rehearsal that evening -- and his band played a memorial concert for him six weeks after that conversation.

And now I find that practically everything leads me back to thinking about my dad.