Last weekend featured one of our occasional forays into the world of culture – classical music, no less.
Our friend Rachel plays viola in the Devon Philharmonic Orchestra (the orchestra formerly known as Exeter Music Group), who give performances in Exeter Cathedral each spring and autumn – we’ve been going down to stay with Rachel and her partner in Exmouth and going to the concerts for over a decade now.
My dad would have been amazed that we go to classical concerts, and the teenage me would have hated me – my dad played a lot of classical music next door to my bedroom at home and it did absolutely nothing for me.
I inherited about 1000 of his LPs, half of which are classical – we’ve dabbled and have found a few bits we really like, mainly obvious things such as Rhapsody in Blue, the 1812 Overture and Night on a Bare Mountain (the first two of which we have seen the DPO play) but have really only lightly scratched the classical oeuvre.
So we are still very much classical numpties and I find it hard to describe the music as it’s quite a different vocabulary to rock and I still don’t have the language. The big thing I take away is the warmth and depth of the sound, which I why I definitely prefer orchestral pieces to things like string quartets – it’s probably my noisy guitar rock background.
One of the things I do like about live classical music is sitting close to the action (we’re usually in the first half-dozen rows) and hearing it in 3 dimensions – the cellos and basses (and violas, sorry Rachel) are clearly on the right, the violins are on the left, the woodwind and brass are further back.
The most recent concert was last weekend, with the following pieces:
Elgar: Falstaff
Tchaikovsky: Overture to Romeo and Juliet
Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2
I wouldn’t have said I knew any of them, but it turns out that I did recognise parts of the Tchaikovsky!
The Elgar I found a little challenging, without going as far as saying I didn’t like it – to be honest, I preferred the other two pieces. Apparently it was quite hard to play, there was plenty of visible bar-counting going on.
The orchestra tried something a bit different with this piece – they published a QR code which linked to a presentation of the story being expressed in each part of the music, for people to follow along on their phones during the performance. We didn’t, I wanted to concentrate on the music.
The Ravel was lively – there was real bounce in the double basses, which I’ve not seen in a classical performance before.
We both spend quite a lot of time watching the percussion section – they’re high up at the back so are very obvious for all to see. Not a place (or instruments) to get their timing wrong!
I also enjoy watching the cellos – we’re so close to them, and it’s maybe because of the position of the instruments and that we can see so much of the work that goes into playing them. As violins and violas are held, there’s less to see.
Some random observations
- The chap on the timpani having plenty to do.
- A young chap giving it some on the triangle and tambourine (I assume “giving it some” is the proper technical term?)
- The puff of hair every time the cymbals are used. That and the great care with which he always picks them up and replaces them – you really don’t want to drop them!
I also noticed during the Elgar that he picked up the cymbals a way into the piece, gave them one fairly gentle bash, and then sat back down for several more minutes. The pressure on the timing must be huge. - A rather long flute piece in the Ravel – the flautist deservingly getting the first acknowledgement from the conductor.
- Pretty much the first hint of a solo violin piece in any of the DPO concerts we’ve been to – that’s always surprised me, I assumed there would be more.