Russian Romantics

13th Oct 2009

Watch­ing Russ­ian Roman­tics was actu­ally my first time vis­it­ing the Sym­phony Hall — pretty embar­rass­ing con­sid­er­ing it’s my third year in Birm­ing­ham and I hap­pen to live only ten min­utes away! I was suit­ably impressed, first by the sheer size of the hall and sec­ondly by the amaz­ing acoustics it gen­er­ates. It almost felt like the music was inside me rather than being played to me, as corny as that sounds.

The pro­gramme was sim­i­larly impres­sive: excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Sleep­ing Beauty, his Piano Con­certo No 1 and also Rachmaninov’s Sym­phony No 3. The high­light for me had to be Sleep­ing Beauty. It was the per­fect start to the pro­gramme, since it is arguably one of the most recog­nis­able pieces of clas­si­cal music. In fact, it took total con­trol not to start singing Dis­ney lyrics dur­ing the Waltz!

The music was played seam­lessly by the St Peters­burg Orches­tra and their con­duc­tor Alexan­der Dmitriev. I am not going to try and pre­tend that I know much about music, in fact I know next to noth­ing, but even I could tell that these musi­cians were at the top of their game. The pianist, Barry Dou­glas, was also incred­i­bly tal­ented. From my seat I could see every move­ment of his hands and the speed and com­plex­ity at which they trav­elled across the keys. He also treated the audi­ence to an impromptu extra piece by Brahms.

It was a highly enjoy­able evening and I encour­age every­one to visit the Sym­phony Hall if they have not done so already.