Sunday, December 5, 2010

11am concert on Sunday morning

Every other Sunday a concert is organized at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels. Each time I tried to book tickets it was either sold out or one of the Sundays they don't have concert. This time I arranged it early enough to secure ourselves 2 tickets for today's concert.
After an early start because we wanted to do our sports before the concert (I was the first one in the swimming pool this morning at 8:30am!), we arrived at the museum to pick up our tickets.
The least we can say is that their organization can be improved. No tickets but an envelope on which a lady wrote the section (green), the row (2) and the seat numbers (5&6). At 10:45am we could access the concert hall only to find out a mess. We did locate the green section, but seats 5&6 were on row 1, and 2 old ladies were comfortably seated at 4 and 5 :( we asked the girl in charge of helping finding seats to help but she bluntly told us to just sit wherever we wanted. Useless. I walked back outside and ask the lady at the desk to help and she told me that indeed it was row 1 and not row 2. But what about the 2 ladies at seats 4 and 5? Well... let's move us to 12 and 13, just behind. Perfect.
Finally sited, we saw the rudest old lady ever. It turned out that seats 3 and 7 were empty (thanks to the bad planning of the lady at the entrance). A couple arrived and asked whether ladies at seat 4 would move so they could sit together. Believe it or not, she refused. I've never seen this and honestly one seat left or right is the same at the front raw in this small concert hall (150 seats roughly). The poor couple sat apart for the whole concert. Sometimes I wonder in which world we live.
Past the chaotic seating organization, music started.
I don't know much about classical music (despite my mum trying hard to educate us) and all I can say is that it was some Chopin, with piano and double bass first, then a quatuor and piano. See the program here.
The pianist, Roberte Mamou, was quite good, apparently famous, but to me lacking emotions when she was playing. It was like she was on automatic mode. The double bass player, on the other hand, was really into it.
2nd half the pianist was joined by a quatuor. I was a bit puzzled when I saw 5 men arriving. The little Latin I remember told me that a quatuor is made of four people. Maybe it means here 4 instruments, as indeed there were 2 violins. I preferred this part to the first one, mostly because the pieces played were more complex and lively, well that's how they sounded to me :)
Around 12:30, concert is over and you're ready for lunch. Despite the fact that we were clearly younger than the majority of the audience, I find it a good idea to entertain your Sundays, especially during cold winter.

PS: note for those who've never been to a concert of classical music, one does not applaud in between the pieces, only when the set is over: "Indiscriminate applause is widely considered a violation of classical music concert etiquette: Applause is discouraged between movements, reserved instead for the end of the entire work". Something to keep in mind to avoid yourself some embarrassment.

No comments: