Tales #12-14

Wednesday
Today was the least exciting day in London yet, which is saying something! We had a couple of classes today, in which I made a presentation on pianos in Mozart's lifetime and learned the condensed history of British architecture (like all of it) in 3 hours. This was all very fun, although I was tired from waking up at 7:30! In the evening, we went to an Foundation for International Education welcome party, which had "nibbles" which means 10 varieties of fried food and nothing else apparently. It was good though, despite the party's inherent awkwardness due to the fact that despite all being Americans, us liberal and performing arts kids are pretty different from most of the people from other schools. It was still fun to meet people and socialize though.

Thursday
Today, I saw the best concert I have ever seen! But hold your horses, I'll get there in a second. Before that, I had an interesting British culture and politics class where we discussed stereotypes that we have of British people, and vice versa, which was very revealing. Among the most prominent stereotypes of Americans according to my professor: we are puritanical, insular, gun-toting, badly dressed, hospitable (wait, what?) energetic, enthusiastic(loud) idiots. Well, he didn't actually SAY the last one, but... For dinner, we made some penne pasta, which was gloriously good, and we shared with some of our neighbors. Then, we went to the concert, at the Royal Festival Hall (see picture (oh, and I got my camera!))

Well, now to the concert. It was amazing. The program was Mozart's 20th Piano Concerto, with a solo by the "Saucy Frenchman" David Fray, and Mahler's 5th symphony. The piano player was really surprisingly good, with flamboyant and expressive styling and dynamics that were perfect for the piece. (see picture)

The Mahler symphony, however, really stole the show. The orchestra was gigantic (as in they had 2 harpists. that big), and they were absolutely together through the entire 68 minutes. That is just the basics, though. They played absolutely brilliantly throughout the entire thing, capturing the individual melodies that constantly play with each other, and creating a glorious story. The 4th movement in particular, had a huge impact on me. It was all strings, and it was the most intensely beautiful performance and composition that I have ever heard. The conductor, Leif Segerstam, was a giant man who is apparently legendary in Finland where he is from. He conducted extremely well (if you can't tell by the last 3 paragraphs!) (see picture- it was very difficult to choose a picture of him, but this will have to do!)

Friday
Since we didn't have class today, I started working on a few assignments for my internship, which is shaping up to give me a lot of practical experience, and exposure to how choirs work. I am really excited for it so far! I also went down and bought tickets for 3 more concerts at the Royal Festival Hall because of how excited I was about the concert last night. This puts my Ravel quota (the number of times I am seeing his orchestral pieces in the next month from tomorrow) at 4. So excited! I also went to the National Art Gallery today (see picture), which was so enormous I probably only got to 1/15th of it in the 2 hours I was there.

I will have to go back, but I saw some beautiful Impressionist artwork by Monet that particularly struck me. One of the portraits from when he was in London, of the Westminster Palace with the Thames in the foreground, was especially neat.
This evening, we cooked some burritos (they do have Mexican food here!), and Will and I went to a concert at St. Martin in the Fields church. A great chamber orchestra played several violin concertos and other pieces, including Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The Four Seasons was especially great; the piece is incredibly innovative, combining baroque style with programmatic composing that is strikingly chromatic, making for a really interesting combination. I heartily enjoyed the entire performance.

Cheers,
Ethan