feeling listless

Music The night school course I was going to study with Fani this term was pulled at the last minute, so at a loose end we found ourselves in The Philharmonic Hall watching The Dante Quartet performing Mozart, Szymanowski and Brahms. I would like to review the concert, but as I've already said on many an occasion I can't review music, and I don't even know where to begin with the classics. In the interval the audience (average age over fifty), who seemed to all be part of some society which attends these concerts of chamber music were all chattering away about movements and what they thought of the playing.

It sounded very good to me. But then seeing people who are my age or younger who have the concentration and skill to create something with that beauty, seemingly so effortlessly (barring some heavy breathing and grunting) and find it very hard to criticise. I like not knowing much about classical music because it means I'm not left in the kind of deconstructive mess I usually find myself with films. When I was at school my friend Richard tried to 'educate' me, but got somewhat annoyed when I tapped my feet the Handel's Messiah. I know some of the history and I can recognise some of the tunes, but it's mostly a foreign place for me. Which means I can just enjoy what's presented to me and let it emote or wash over me. Ignorance is bliss is a cliche, but in this case it's a perfect explaination.

We sneaked into one of the boxes for the second half. I say sneaked. I asked if it would be OK first, which is depressingly straight I know and one step towards becoming The Man, but I didn't want to get thrown out. That would have been embarassing. Other than the privacy aspect it really isn't all that special. You're away from the stage by some margin and in this case the music seemed somewhat far off. The acoustics seemed much better in the stall were we'd started out, and we hadn't had nearly as many disapproving looks here (a woman in the next box seemed to be of the crowd who believe classical music is for people with grey hair, even if in this case it's actually being performed by young people). I love spontaneous evenings like this.