La Orquesta

About a week ago, I had the pleasure of attending a concert in the beautiful Teatro Colón

This beautiful venue is located no less than 4 blocks away from my apartment and the night was warm but crisp for a nice jaunt over to hear the Orquesta  Filarmónica de Buenos Aires. The inside of the building was just as impressive as the outside

Our tickets were standing room only (the highest possible seating placement) but the acoustics were great so it didn't matter. There was also a place to sit near the back of the standing area so most of us got to relax instead of stand for the two(ish) hours. The concert itself was okay. It brought back a lot of memories of my undergrad. They even played Sibelius 2, which I remember playing with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony back in the day. It definitely had some interesting moments. That piece is all about dramatic musical shapes and at times the orchestra was surprisingly not together which tended to ruin the effect, in my opinion. The second was Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Overture which, of course, is a lot of fun to listen to (other than Prokofiev's unfortunate inclusion of saxophone) and the final piece was a cute and playful rhapsody by Enesco that I'd never heard before but did a good job of showcasing the woodwinds' ability to stay together with each other despite their questionable ability to maintain ensemble with the rest of the group. One thing that I noticed, even though the trumpet players were playing German horns, they still had a bright and brassy (latin american?) tendency. The first player was very precise, which was nice to hear.

All in all, the evening was quite enjoyable.