Interest: October 2004 Archives
Last night, a bunch of friends and I went to the Disney Concert hall in down town LA. Yes the giant metallic monstrosity. But as you can see above, the inside is quite different looking. Mostly covered with some sort of wood, I assume for the acoustics, the inners of this beast is well, beast looking. The roof of the inner hall resembles what, my friends and I called, the underbelly of a Ohmu. Layers upon layers of curved wooden plates covered the ceiling, only to be broken by small openings for lights and other stage-ly devices dangling from the unknown darkness. But the picture above is of the grand organ, which I dig. It seems to use these box shaped wooden frames to covers some of the piping and founder them around like a wooden flower or tree. It does support the organic feel of the whole hall. Which I guess is only an extension of the outer metallic organic-ness. Sound-wise I cant say I’m a fine judge of acoustics, but we sat in the back orchestra section, which is new concept to me. The seats were basically behind the orchestra and we can see the conductor’s face. It is the "Orchestra View section below, the one in purple. The sound sounded a little boxed in. I felt like everything I heard was a echo or some sort of acoustic resonance from somewhere else. It had a very omnipresence sound.
So last evening schedule started with Schubert: Overture in E minor, D. 648 and then Schumann: Cello Concerto with a cello soloist, Peter Stumpf.We had our intermission and our $3 bottled water, and proceeded with the main piece of the evening, the one we went for, Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 "The Year 1905".
My roommate recommended a few Russian composers for a RPG game I am playing, Shstakovich’s name came up. I guess this lead to him finding out about the performance, thus our evening at the concert hall. I listen to some of these Russian composers the few nights leading up to the event, I do find them quite interesting. I like their wave like rhythm with the emotions of a piece. They tend to get very dramatic, and then very subtle, quiet almost peaceful. I think this piece that we heard last night, as I deducted form the title is about a year of struggle. The La Philharmonic’s guide to the song mentioned it as a piece about 1956 Hungarian uprising. But overall the song does feel like a story, about struggle and conflict. It somehow carries the tone of suffering in the slower movements. I really do get a feel for what they describe as people struggling to survive the harsh coldness. There’s a slow drama in the music about holding on to the fire almost… or just the fire of life. Which I assume is very Russian, as it has a feel of Mainland Chinese movies. But I had a great time waiting for the move dramatic parts where the entire percussion section got up and started to hit things. I think I was most amazed by the sheer focus of the large cymbal player, whom got up like every 5 min. to hit the cymbal twice. But the look on his face for each hit, as if his soul, his entire existence was about that one sound, in that one moment, how his entire body worked into the motion of the hit of cymbal, and the motion that followed the vibrations.
Well overall it was a nice experience. I do miss being in environments like that, it reminds me of my Hawaiian days where I hung out at big dinners and large gatherings. I guess I was so into the whole thing I was about to walk around with a video camera again.
Recently 2 articles nudged me in this train of thought; the iPod is becoming a item of multiple genres. As hip and trendy device of the Apple Company the iPod has take its share in the market. According to articles the iPod holds 92.1% of all hard drive based players (Cnet) and 68% of all MP3 players flash RAM or hard drive in the US. (The Inquirer) Not counting the recently release of the 4th generation iPod is just about to hit the Xmas season. The release of iPod Minis in Japan has also started a craze in the gadget hungry country. Also iTunes is holds 70% of the market for legalized music downloads.
