The Last Symphony

Here's something random that I love about Powell Hall: every hair gets its own armrests - that's right, two of them.  That means that you never have that awkward airplane-shared-armrest thing happening.

You know the one: you manage to find your seat first and score the armrest, so you never want to move your arm and relinquish rights to it to your neighbor.  Or it might be that you're using the front portion and they're using the back portion, but when you start to get uncomfortable and want to move, you find that you're out of luck.  Or you have that moment where you touch arms, then you both pull your elbows in and mumble a non-committal "sorry," but you're really only concerned with whether you'll get your spot back before they do - but you can't jump for it too quickly or you'd be the overzealous seatmate.

But I digress.  Powell has chairs, and each one has two armrests.  That's nice.

The real point, though, is that the musician can play.  And the choir can sing.  And they did Beethoven proud.

It was quite an ensemble.

David Robertson himself, SLSO's music director, conducted the show.  He's delightfully unassuming.  He just walks out, steps onto the platform, and gets to it.  No showiness or need for attention.  Just getting right to the music.

The first half of Robertson's program consisted of Bruckner and Berg; post-intermission was all Beethoven, specifically his Symphony No. 9.  And it was fabulous - moving and fluid and energetic and great.