Fun Saturday
So, I was brutally awoken this morning by air raid alarms....honest-to-goodness air raid sirens going off at 10:00 am with no explanation....it was weird. They blared for like 20 minutes...it was awful. But, it did wake me up! I put on some clothes and went to IES to check e-mail and take care of other business (like the monstrous Smugmug re-orginization procedure....jeez it took a long time!) and I ran into Natalie and Carla....the mentioned that they were going to the Heiligenkreuz Chamber Music Festival concert that night (a world-famous chamber music festival which is run by this guy who happens to teach at IES and gives us cheap tickets) and that it because the performers were lesser-known and not many tickets had been sold, they would let in a certain number of IES students in for free! The catch: the concert is in this fabulous monastery outside of Vienna, and getting there with public transit is possible, but difficult, especially on weekends. They invited me to come with them, so I said I could.....I had to run home and do shopping for dinner tomorrow (I'm making spaghetti) and hurry a bit to get ready in time (we had to leave at 4:30 for a 7:30 concert). We left pretty late because people didn't take the meeting time seriously, so we missed the Schnellbahn to Mödling, where we would have transferred to a bus to take us to Heiligenkreuz. Unfortunately since we missed the Schnellbahn, we missed the connecting bus (which only leaves every two hours on Saturdays) so we had to take a taxi to the monastery, which ended up costing €8/person. The concert was okay....I'll write more about it tomorrow when I'm not so seriously tired. I should actually just go to bed now, since I won't forget everything before tomorrow.
****
All right, it's Sunday afternoon now, and my spaghetti sauce is simmering in the kitchen...it smells good, but I don't know how it's going to turn out.....in any case, where was I in my story about Heiligenkreuz? Oh yes....so we missed the bus, and a bus driver who had just finished his route was nice enough to get out and explain to us how it works....on Saturday the bus to Heiligenkreuz only leaves every two hours, so since we missed the first one we had to take a cab. We finally found a minivan, since 5 of us wouldn't fit in a taxi.....did I mention who I went with? Natalie, David, Carla, Rebecca & me....Natalie, a violinist, and Carla, a flautist, live right upstairs, David, a percussionist also lives in my building, and Rebecca is a clarinet player and works in the library with me. They're really really great folks.....even though getting to the monastery was kind of an ordeal, we still had fun, I think. The concert we saw was one of 5 in the festival, and since the woodwind trio that was playing was not very well known and attendance was going to be low, we got there and they let us come in and fill in the back row right before the start of the concert. The concert took place in the Kaisersaal, which is this lovely small Baroque room with wonderful acoustics...it's really a perfect place for chamber music, since it's so intimate and the acoustics are so good....it was an interesting concert. The first piece was "Introduction and allegro alla Tarentella" by Gordon Jacob....it was really awful. The second was a trio by Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer, which was a bit better...he had a very melodic style, almost like early music in the interplay of similar polyphonic textures. Then there was a trio by Leron Ostransky, which was interesting....he has a far more harmonic approach, and for the first time in the concert there were actual chords! (the second movement even ended in a ridicuous plagal cadence....it was hilarious) Then, after that 20 minutes of music, there was a 25-minute intermission......which was interesting. After the intermission the flautist and clarinetist played a fantasia by Andersen Viana...it was interesting, and the players played with more spirit than any of the previous pieces, but I still didn't find the composition very interesting. The last piece on the program was a sonata by Milhaud, which was by far the best composition on the program.....after the Milhaud they did some Saint-Saëns thing as an encore, which was....interesting. I don't really know enough about woodwind technique to criticize (it sounded fine to me) but the two flautists and the clarinet player that I was with all were ragging on their technique.....I guess it was that we expected to be floored by how awesome they were, but apparently they exhibited audible technical deficiencies. (nothing like the pianist for the Beethoven in Wiener Abend.....he messed up scales and octaves and easy stuff like that....and I thought every musician in this city was perfect!) We took a taxi back to the Schenllbahn station, but it ended up only costing €3 a person as opposed to €8, which was nice. We rode with Ulrika Anton (head of the Instrumental performance workshop) in the taxi, and then on the Schell- and U-bahns back to Vienna. I never really had the chance to talk to her before, but she's really really cool! I was glad to get the opportunity to know her. After getting back to Dürergasse (where all of us live excpet Rebecca) we wanted pizza, but the place was closed, so I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and pasta for everyone instead. I'm not a good cook, I realize, but I like cooking for people. We had a bit to drink (and took care of Naomi when she came home piss drunk) and talked about stuff for a long time....I ended up telling the story of my family (which is an epic tale, really) and of course people had the usual questions: "do you want to know your father? did you ever feel like you wanted a father? what was it like to have no friends because you were homeschooled?" etc. etc. etc....I've grown so used to answering the same questions that I've been asked basically my whole life....it's weird. Anyway, the night was fun, and even though everyone complained about the great hassle it was getting out there and said it wasn't worth it to see the concert, I figure any experience is worth it as long as you don't get hurt or something....it may not have been ideal, but I still had fun gosh darn it!
****
All right, it's Sunday afternoon now, and my spaghetti sauce is simmering in the kitchen...it smells good, but I don't know how it's going to turn out.....in any case, where was I in my story about Heiligenkreuz? Oh yes....so we missed the bus, and a bus driver who had just finished his route was nice enough to get out and explain to us how it works....on Saturday the bus to Heiligenkreuz only leaves every two hours, so since we missed the first one we had to take a cab. We finally found a minivan, since 5 of us wouldn't fit in a taxi.....did I mention who I went with? Natalie, David, Carla, Rebecca & me....Natalie, a violinist, and Carla, a flautist, live right upstairs, David, a percussionist also lives in my building, and Rebecca is a clarinet player and works in the library with me. They're really really great folks.....even though getting to the monastery was kind of an ordeal, we still had fun, I think. The concert we saw was one of 5 in the festival, and since the woodwind trio that was playing was not very well known and attendance was going to be low, we got there and they let us come in and fill in the back row right before the start of the concert. The concert took place in the Kaisersaal, which is this lovely small Baroque room with wonderful acoustics...it's really a perfect place for chamber music, since it's so intimate and the acoustics are so good....it was an interesting concert. The first piece was "Introduction and allegro alla Tarentella" by Gordon Jacob....it was really awful. The second was a trio by Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer, which was a bit better...he had a very melodic style, almost like early music in the interplay of similar polyphonic textures. Then there was a trio by Leron Ostransky, which was interesting....he has a far more harmonic approach, and for the first time in the concert there were actual chords! (the second movement even ended in a ridicuous plagal cadence....it was hilarious) Then, after that 20 minutes of music, there was a 25-minute intermission......which was interesting. After the intermission the flautist and clarinetist played a fantasia by Andersen Viana...it was interesting, and the players played with more spirit than any of the previous pieces, but I still didn't find the composition very interesting. The last piece on the program was a sonata by Milhaud, which was by far the best composition on the program.....after the Milhaud they did some Saint-Saëns thing as an encore, which was....interesting. I don't really know enough about woodwind technique to criticize (it sounded fine to me) but the two flautists and the clarinet player that I was with all were ragging on their technique.....I guess it was that we expected to be floored by how awesome they were, but apparently they exhibited audible technical deficiencies. (nothing like the pianist for the Beethoven in Wiener Abend.....he messed up scales and octaves and easy stuff like that....and I thought every musician in this city was perfect!) We took a taxi back to the Schenllbahn station, but it ended up only costing €3 a person as opposed to €8, which was nice. We rode with Ulrika Anton (head of the Instrumental performance workshop) in the taxi, and then on the Schell- and U-bahns back to Vienna. I never really had the chance to talk to her before, but she's really really cool! I was glad to get the opportunity to know her. After getting back to Dürergasse (where all of us live excpet Rebecca) we wanted pizza, but the place was closed, so I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and pasta for everyone instead. I'm not a good cook, I realize, but I like cooking for people. We had a bit to drink (and took care of Naomi when she came home piss drunk) and talked about stuff for a long time....I ended up telling the story of my family (which is an epic tale, really) and of course people had the usual questions: "do you want to know your father? did you ever feel like you wanted a father? what was it like to have no friends because you were homeschooled?" etc. etc. etc....I've grown so used to answering the same questions that I've been asked basically my whole life....it's weird. Anyway, the night was fun, and even though everyone complained about the great hassle it was getting out there and said it wasn't worth it to see the concert, I figure any experience is worth it as long as you don't get hurt or something....it may not have been ideal, but I still had fun gosh darn it!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home