Concert Attendance

This music event took place at Davis Symphony Hall, San Francisco, CA, and it was very ecstatic, especially when the two giants of the Romantic era actually graced the program. Once, Schumann proudly described his overture as one of the strongest of his musical children. His genuinely electrifying Fourth Symphony, which predated his two other performances, was a beautiful birthday present to his beloved young wife Clara. On the other hand, Brahms made a unique concerto in which he paired violin and cello partially to mend a particular break in his real friendship with virtuoso violinist. However, the instruments expressed a difference in their sound and the result was erotic, meaningful, and Gypsy-flavored work. Marek Janowski, who embodied creativity of Schumann and Brahms, performed all these masterpieces (Lloyd 39).

Being present at the concert, I did not want to be a passive music listener but an active one. This is because I found myself listening very actively to the chord progression, meter changes, key changes, dynamic changes, orchestration and harmonic balance among others. In my opinion, active listening has a very important purpose for comprehension since at the end of the brilliant performance I was able to discuss the music in detail (Lloyd 40).

It was impressive when Marek Janowski appeared with orchestras like Boston Symphony, Pittsburg Symphony, Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras without forgetting San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The concert opened with Schumann’s overture “Manfred” and this is a piece of music, which was written in 1848 to 1849. At the same time, this is one of the premieres that he initially performed on 14^th March, 1852 at a blissful concert that was held at Leipzig Gewandhaus. The main inspiration of its creation is Schumann’s fascination with Byron’s personality and his initial dramatic poem “Manfred”. Therefore, he explained that he had never devoted himself with such admiration and endeavor to any other composition except for “Manfred”. Other pieces performed were concerto in A minor for violin, cello, and orchestra composed by Brahms. Originally, Brahms conducted most of orchestral music with his friend Joseph Joachim. Marek Janowski also performed his “Rhenish” symphony, which has really slow music passages (Lloyd 40).

Other performers were people from Munich, such as Arabella Steinbacher, who began studying violin at a very tender age of three. Having been crowned as the youngest violin student of Ana Chumachenko at the Munich Academy of Music, she made her best playing violin that day. In Brahms Double Concerto, Arabella appeared with Alban Gerhardt who represents his musical talent being both cellist and pianist. He also started to play these instruments from a very early age. After these two musicians, the concert closed with Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, which is known as “Rhenish”. It was composed between November, 1850 and February, 1851. I was thrilled by the way Janowski performed it. Overall, I came to realize that the most used instruments at the concert were violins (Lloyd 41).

I mostly concentrated on Brahms music, specifically because it was satiated with dialogues between the soloists, who expressed various phrases, and each performer elaborated on the different ideas while borrowing gestures from the orchestra and making suggestions to others. In Brahms pieces, the orchestra opened with a wonderful storm of sound and immediately fell silent, taking a short stop while the cello took a sudden dominance onstage. On completion of impassioned wings, he entered with a unique phrase, which is the work’s first genuine tune. After that, this musical phrase became gentle and consoling in order for the violin to enter echoing it. It sounded beautiful and I enjoyed every bit of the concert. It is not enough only to follow the music, but the harmony of the instrument could make the audience feel its mellifluous language in order to enable them to love it more and more and discover other masterpieces of orchestral classics (Lloyd 40).