Taking Flight

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LSO!

London Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

7:30 PM

Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor

"Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a - Benjamin Britten

Dawn: Leno e tranquillo

Sunday Morning: Allgro spiritoso

Moonlight: Andante comodo e rubato

Storm: Presto con fuoco

Concerto in F - George Gershwin

Allegro

Adagio-Andante con moto

Allegro agitato

Yujia Wang, Piano

-Intermission-

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 - Dmitri Shostakovich

Moderato

Allegretto

Largo

Allegro non troppo

This past week I had the pleasure of attending a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra, known in popular culture as being the orchestra that plays a lot of movie scores. The orchestra was led by MTT, one of the LSO's guest conductors, for his 70th birthday tour. I also noticed that he had previously worked with the soloist, most prominently during the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

Naturally, the LSO is much better than the Seattle Symphony-the orchestra is much more technically sound and plays much better as a unit. The orchestra flows as one body, and MTT, despite his age, was still very animated. The main issue I had with the performance was with the stage presence of the soloist. While she was very technically sound (and has some of the fastest fingers I have ever seen), it seemed she didn't know what to do when she wasn't playing the piano. I was almost afraid that she would trip and hit her head on something given how fast she went through her bowing motion. At least she wasn't as awkward as the pianist that played Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto earlier in the season. The concert did run very long with three total encores, and by the time the final note was played, only around half the audience remained-it seemed that people did tire a little bit towards the end, as three hours for a concert is longer than most.