Sunday, November 15, 2009

I had an orchestra in Amsterdam...

Played Beethoven, Schubert, and Saint-Saens in a lovely church in Amsterdam today. I couldn't believe how many people crammed into the church and paid €15 a head to hear an amateur orchestra play, especially when the tempo for a couple of movements of Beethoven's Fourth got so out of hand that it began to sound like a runaway county fair orchestra... but for the most part I was impressed and proud. It was the first time my family has ever seen me play violin in public, too, with the exception of a couple school functions. I do wish for their sake that it hadn't been a three-hour concert, but c'est la vie. The 12-year-old soloist on Saint-Saens was worth every penny even if everything else had been horribly out of tune and tempo -- she is utterly phenomenal. Just picture a tiny little girl playing this, and weep.

1 comment:

Levi Stahl said...

Oh, that sounds lovely--what fun! And in a church it must have sounded great.

I got a piano a few months ago and have been slowly re-learning after twenty-five years away. It's hard, and I'm not any good, but it's so much fun; the hours just melt away. (And now I can play "Linus and Lucy," which I've wanted to do since I was a little kid.)