December 06, 2009

Get Some Culture

One of my German classmates is a retired high school teacher, auditing the class. He has season tickets to the Buffalo Philharmonic, but he's out of town this weekend. Thus I got a free trip to get some culture, taking along a friend whom I knew appreciated music.

The Philharmonic plays in Kleinhans Music Hall, which seems like it should be "Kleinhan's" or "Kleinhans'", but it's not. The acoustics were excellent, noticeably better than the Clemens Center. The program was Trittico Botticelliano by Ottorino Respighi, Concerto #2 for Cello and Orchestra by Victor Herbert, and the Symphony #2 by Jean Sibelius.

Despite planning some spare time to arrive on time, we were almost late, as Kleinhans was not as easy to find as I expected. Its address is "Number 3 Symphony Circle", with said circle being a roundabout downtown. I figured drive to the roundabout and it'd be the obvious concert hall with a distinctive facade. Well, that facade faces away from the circle, and there were two other monumental buildings facing said circle. And to get into the Kleinhans I had to guess which of the roads leaving the circle actually led to it. There were several false starts, I must confess, and the parking lot was full by the time we identified the proper building. On-street parking is free in Buffalo, and being young and healthy we just resolved to walk two blocks or so.

The seats were up in the nosebleed section, just one row ahead of the back wall. We could have moved forward into any of hundreds of empty seats, but my companion was happy being "behind all the coughing people" which seemed like a reasonable decision. And as I mentioned, the acoustics were excellent even up where we were.

The performers were quite good, with a nice cello soloist. There was one trombonist who appeared to be seeing the music for the first time that evening. During intermission, there were a couple of violins onstage keeping warmed up, and that trombonist, who was flipping his music and trying out difficult sections. I didn't hear him screw up during the symphony, so I guess he got it together in time.

As a final amusement, the building did not have anything so gauche as a bathroom. It had a "Powder Room" for the ladies, and a "Gentlemens' Lounge" for the men. I must confess that the Lounge seemed like a rather unpleasant place to lounge around, what with the lack of comfortable seating and the rather ceramic decor. That is the kind of odd track that my brain's humor center follows.

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