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« Convenience Samples: A Pictorial Representation | Main | OK Is OK » July 12, 2007"Carmina Burana" At Benaroya HallElaine and I caught the Seattle Symphony's performance of "Carmina Burana" at Benaroya Hall tonight, and I just wanted to take a moment to highly recommend it. I'm not much of a classical music guy - my tastes usually run to dance/electronica and-or 80s pop - but of late I've been listening to more of the classical canon (pun intended). So when Elaine asked if I wanted to check out a few performances at the symphony, I thought, "why not?" I know only part of "Carmina Burana" (specifically, "O Fortuna" - if you've seen a trailer for an action movie in the last five years, you know the piece), so it was a treat to be able to experience the entire work, start to finish. What struck me most, however, was how vibrant the live listening experience is, relative to a CD or MP3. Classical music has always been something that's a little flat, as if it were boxed, put on a shelf, and was being broadcast from an AM radio contained within. I think this is because the speakers (or your iPod earbuds) just can't capture the full range of the sound in a way that being there does - feeling your sternum vibrate when the drums go off, that sort of thing. In many ways, it's the difference between watching Storm basketball on TV (generally tolerable) and the Storm at Key Arena (full-throated, hot-blooded excitement). You just have to be there. So go. If you've never been, I recommend it. The audience was totally diverse - lots of ages, lots of different people (translation: it's not just old ladies and their bored husbands), and, if you can, land something in the second-floor balcony. It's fabulous. Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 12, 2007 11:13 PM. Posted to Entertainment. CommentsAs someone who in a previous mode of existence was lucky enough to be a soloist in Benaroya Hall (albeit while sick and compromised vocally), and who has been there many times as an audience member, it is indeed a fabulous hall for live (as in, unamplified) music. Carmina Burana is a great piece by which to discover this, too--it's loud, bawdy (I'd be curious to know what translation they gave you, and how toned down it is), and it's not too long. One other thing I'll suggest about why classical music is difficult for today's listener is because , in terms of volume, there's no way it can ever compete with machines that "go all the way up to eleven". Since that's where most pop music is recorded, our ears expect that as a baseline, so recorded classical music feels like a letdown. It takes hearing it in a hall that's really built for it to hear how that's not actually the case. Richard Posted by: Richard Barrett Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)« Convenience Samples: A Pictorial Representation | Main | OK Is OK » |
