Last Friday, August 13th, I brought 9 of my students to a performance at the Esplanade Concert Hall. The concert featured Conductor Krzyszrof Ubanski and Pianist Dimitri Alexeev.
The concert was a success, and everyone enjoyed the Beethoven Piano Concerto. Something unexpected happened at the end of the first movement of this concerto. The conductor's baton stick broke and it flew offstage and almost hit one of the students sitting in the first row. One of the cellist asked for the broken stick and it was passed to her. The laughter of the audience broke the silence. The conductor quickly rushed backstage to get a new baton. The show went on.
In Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 named "Pathetique", you can feel the emotions of the conductor and players as they manuevoured through the 4 movements. The symphony is rather dark and intense, and the players performed with much aplomb.
Overall, it was a good experience for the students to attend a live concert and to actually put in practice what they learn in theory to good use.