SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN E MINOR by Mahler
Tonight Michael and I attended the San Francisco Symphony. It was Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Mahler's 7th Symphony.
(Click here for a brief clip) It is a seldom performed and seldom recorded work that I had never heard before. I do like Mahler quite a lot so I was looking forward to this. It was
very different from the other Mahler works I've listened to, lighter and funnier in a way. The concert was being recorded live as part of the Mahler Cycle of CD's that the SF Symphony has been working on for a number of years. There was no intermission and only the one, very long, symphony performed. The 7th Symphony was almost one and a half hours long. They did pause between each of the five movements for a few moments so we could cough and stretch and wiggle noisily around in our seats.
The final movement seems to poke fun at Wagner a bit, which is a good thing since Wagner seems to have taken himself, and Germany, way too seriously. I enjoyed it thoroughly, especially since I had a good idea of what was going on in it because Edwin Outwater gave such a terrific pre-concert "Inside Music" talk.
Before the concert we had a couple of Margaritas and dinner at Chevy's two blocks from Davies Symphony Hall.
This concludes my "What I did today" report for Thursday March 10, 2005