Open Wardrobes

On Saturday night my wife and I attended The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's concert at the Ordway. The performance featured French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard as guest conductor and pianist (he is currently one of the SPCO's Artistic Partners). First, two disclaimers: 1) I work on staff for the orchestra so I am admittedly am a little biased. 2) I know next to nothing about classical music.


The performance was fabulous. It started with a short piece by Ives called The Unanswered Question which had a handful of woodwind players playing on stage, with the string players and a trumpet playing from the hallways around the audience, a veru unique effect. I don't know that I "got it," but I did like it. Next Aimard performed several short solio piano pieces by Ravel. When Aimard plays the piano he exudes this sense of discovering each note for the first time, a strong sense of play that is simply delightful to watch. The last piece on the first half was a suite by Debussy that featured most of the orchestra with Aimard as conductor and was a treat, a light fun piece.


The second half was Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with the full orchestra and Aimard leading on piano. Like Beethoven's 7th Symphony, this concerto has some great moments where the orchestra starts soft and suddenly builds to a huge crensendo which made for a nice end to the concert.


So, a great evening filled with a wide variety of pieces, each different from all the others. The first half was all 20th century music, but they were all lovely pieces and I enjoyed each of them. The SPCO really is an amazing group of performers (again, I admit my bias, but really, they're amazing) and just keep getting better. I don't usually know all the pieces, but that's part of the fun - getting to experience more than Mozart and another Haydn symphony.