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Saturday - New Philharmonic
May. 8th, 2006 05:48 pmAs mentioned, part 1 of my busy weekend was attending a concert by the New Philharmonic, a symphony housed at the College of Dupage, my local community college.
I had to admit that I was a little concerned when I was handed the program. The director, Kirk Muspratt, is the very picture of a pretentious intellectual - shoulder-length hair with a bad 80's perm, a beard, and a five-page bio in the program. As it happens, he may be an intellectual, but he's got a sense of humor. The New Phil does an "interactive intermission" in which Muspratt answers audience questions. When asked, "what makes a good conductor," he let his principal violinist answer. She said, "must be the hair." Other comments:
- The New Phil has a crackerjack woodwind section. I don't know if that was laid in because of the Brahms Symphony (Brahms did a lot to popularize the new-fangled clarinet) but they did an outstanding job. Apparently it's a bit of a floating group, as several musicians were off playing for the Chicago stand of "Wicked."
- The program closed with the William Tell Overture. I realized that I had never actually heard the whole thing. The "Lone Ranger" theme is actually the last third of the Overture. The first 5 minutes is a cello concerto. I also didn't realize that another famous theme, Bug's Bunny's "Walking in the Woods" (played just before Elmer Fudd shows up) is the middle of that Overture.
- Part of the program was "Songs of the Auvergne" by Joseph Canteloube. They are folk songs in the Occitan dialect of French, of which I understood not a word. Neither did the guy behind me, who started snoring. His wife was not amused. In fact, even up to the end of the William Tell, she was trying to keep him awake. Listening to this, I thought that the english translation of one of the songs, called "Unfortunate Is He Who Has A Wife" was appropriate.
Wretched in the man who has a wife,
Wretched the man without one!
He who hasn't got one wants one,
He who has one doesn't!
Happy is the woman
Who has the man she needs!
But happier still is she
Who's managed to stay free!
I had to admit that I was a little concerned when I was handed the program. The director, Kirk Muspratt, is the very picture of a pretentious intellectual - shoulder-length hair with a bad 80's perm, a beard, and a five-page bio in the program. As it happens, he may be an intellectual, but he's got a sense of humor. The New Phil does an "interactive intermission" in which Muspratt answers audience questions. When asked, "what makes a good conductor," he let his principal violinist answer. She said, "must be the hair." Other comments:
- The New Phil has a crackerjack woodwind section. I don't know if that was laid in because of the Brahms Symphony (Brahms did a lot to popularize the new-fangled clarinet) but they did an outstanding job. Apparently it's a bit of a floating group, as several musicians were off playing for the Chicago stand of "Wicked."
- The program closed with the William Tell Overture. I realized that I had never actually heard the whole thing. The "Lone Ranger" theme is actually the last third of the Overture. The first 5 minutes is a cello concerto. I also didn't realize that another famous theme, Bug's Bunny's "Walking in the Woods" (played just before Elmer Fudd shows up) is the middle of that Overture.
- Part of the program was "Songs of the Auvergne" by Joseph Canteloube. They are folk songs in the Occitan dialect of French, of which I understood not a word. Neither did the guy behind me, who started snoring. His wife was not amused. In fact, even up to the end of the William Tell, she was trying to keep him awake. Listening to this, I thought that the english translation of one of the songs, called "Unfortunate Is He Who Has A Wife" was appropriate.
Wretched in the man who has a wife,
Wretched the man without one!
He who hasn't got one wants one,
He who has one doesn't!
Happy is the woman
Who has the man she needs!
But happier still is she
Who's managed to stay free!