Music (non-viola)
In the last two days, I've been to three musical events: a meeting of the board of a music camp in New England yesterday, a concert by the Orion string quartet earlier this evening, and a concert by the Cleveland Orchestra tonight.
The music camp makes playing string quartets seem like the coolest thing you could ever do as a teenager (at least for the kids who go there, I guess). The string quartet gets to play some of the greatest musical literature around — tonight, Beethoven Op. 132.
The Cleveland Orchestra combines all of this. They play like cool teenagers and like a string quartet. You can see the string players watching each other, and the wind players watching the string players. (This is unusual — most of the time orchestral players look bored and pained.) I have never heard a sound as soft as the entire Cleveland string section playing pianissimo pizzicatos. Unbelievable. Everyone in the hall just had to be still. And then at the end (this was Brahms 1) the triumph was complete and joyous. It was a thoroughly wonderful evening.
Eliot Spitzer was sitting a couple of rows behind me tonight. I hope he had a good time too. I wonder what he thought of the pianissimos.