My concert was good. I happened to run into James Conlon in the street as he was making his way toward the concert hall and I congratulated him on his Silenced Voices effort. I think he was pleased that I recognized him and genuinely appreciative of my comments.
The Ullman piece was interesting. The first few movements were reminiscent of Bartok (not my favorite composer) here and Saint-Saens there, but the final movement was a noisy Mahlerian sort of thing that I enjoyed a great deal. The Mahler symphony was very well done. Mr. Conlon strove to bring out the individual orchestral colors--in a piece filled with them and played in a concert hall very conducive to such an approach--and succeeded magnificently.
Unfortunately, I had very, very, very (that is three verys) poor seatmates at the concert. She wore bangle bracelets. I am not sure how much shit one must have for brains to wear bangle bracelets to a symphony concert, but bangle bracelets she wore. He kept snorting phlegm throughout the entire concert. (Sorry, I had to listen to it, you get to read about it.) He also spent the better part of the last movement of the Ullman symphony attempting to unwrap a cellophane-wrapped candy. There ought to be a requirement that each patron must pass a basic concertgoer ettiquette (i.e., common sense) certification before being allowed in the auditorium.
And, on a politically INcorrect note, a lot of people yammer about kids today (oh, a Bye Bye Birdie reference), but, if we're going to generalize, my observations indicate that the worst behavior in concert halls and theatres these days comes from the senior citizen set.
