By VERONICA REARDON Your Weekend Columnist
Last semester, a couple of my friends and I started playing together in a horn trio with the Hopkins Chamber Music Program. We all love playing music, but our pianist, Tyler, was definitely the most motivated member of our trio. He seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things classical music, although if you were to point it out, he would claim it’s not true.
Either way, it was Tyler who first suggested that our horn player Kristen and I go to some Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) performances. He had purchased a student pass for the season last semester and needed a buddy to go with.
Unfortunately, time after time I forgot to buy one, and I finished the year without having gone to any BSO performances whatsoever.
This year I finally bought one and had the pleasure of going to a BSO concert this past Friday. Concerts are typically about two hours long. The first piece they played was composed by Sergei Prokofiev and, according to the program, written in the style of Haydn. Unfortunately the program turned out to be accurate. I am not a fan of Haydn, although the orchestra certainly played it well!
The next piece was a vast improvement. It was an Alexander Glazunov violin concerto and was much more interesting to listen to than the Prokofiev. Then again, I very much like Russian-sounding music, so there you go. The soloist, who I believe usually serves as the concertmaster for BSO, did quite well on it as well.
They played Beethoven’s Pastoral to finish the concert. Even if you’ve never listened to classical music in your life, you’ve heard this song. The themes in it are featured in several film scores. Rumor has it that Beethoven wrote it to express the happiness he felt whenever he went out into the countryside, a theory I would not disagree with.
Fun fact: the timpani, which is a type of drum, only appear once in the whole piece as a representation of a crack of thunder.
There are BSO concerts every week and only two that a student season pass won’t get you into (those are Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell, so that makes sense).
For any who are interested, a BSO student pass is $25 for the whole season. Once you buy your pass, all you have to do is reserve your seat and you’re good to go.
It’s a pretty good deal for some pretty kickass music; Hilary Hahn, a violinist from Baltimore, is playing Dvorak in November, which should definitely be worth seeing, and there’s a lot of good stuff coming up in between. Next week is Don Giovanni! Check out bsomusic.org for more information.
