Saturday, April 21, 2007

Friday Night

Fun night last night! To start we met two other couples at Cubanitas, a really fun (and yummy!) Cuban restaurant in downtown Milwaukee. Then we were off to the symphony where we saw Garrick Ohlsson perform one of my favorite Chopin piano concertos.

The second half of the concert was a rearranged Brahms piano quartet which was entertaining, but I felt a little weird hearing a piece I'm fairly familiar with have so much percussion and brass added to something that was supposed to be just, well, a quartet. However, it appears there are proponents and foes of Arnold Schoenberg's 1937 arrangement throughout the music world and I'll let the experts duke the ethics and propriety of the issue. For a non-expert like me I'll just say I enjoyed it, but prefer it as it was originally composed.

One last note: we're going through the Milwaukee Symphony's 2007/2008 calendar and would love advice and input from "experts" out there which concerts might be the best in terms of upcoming star performers and wonderful, classic compositions. I have my eye on a few but would love to hear others' opinions.

4 comments:

Alexis Jacobs said...

Sounds like a great evening. :) You sure you don't have any voyeurism to share? Haha

Anonymous said...

May 23rd- Bach Mass in B-Minor (to support Lutheran Composers)

March 7th- Verdi Requiem (full chorus and a large orchestra (with off-stage trumpets)

October 20th- Tschaikovsky 4th is one of the old war-horses that features the brass section

That's based on a quick glance on a Sunday night

Anonymous said...

I was already jealous about your Friday night. Now that I read that Chopin (my favorite composer) was involved, I think we are going to have to end our friendship. I'm sorry.

It's been fun.

Unknown said...

Cait, sounds great! We were very close to you Friday night - we were in Chicago. And actually, dh was in Milwaukee on Thursday. Hmmmm.....we really really should get together some day and let Maia and Elisabeth play. I mean, they've been a part of each others lives in one way or another since in the womb. How crazy but neat-o is that? :)