A Romantic Weekend

As part of the FUBEST Program, we get tickets to four "cultural events" around the city. This includes concerts, opera and ballet performances, and for the less cultured, soccer games. Two of the performances that I chose to attend were both this past weekend, and unknowingly, were in the Romantic style.

The first was on Saturday night, when I went to the Berliner Philharmoniker to see the Berlin Symphony Orchestra perform three separate pieces, all by Romantic composers. My first impression of the Philharmoniker is the building that it is in. A block away from Potsdamer Platz, the building actually has two concert halls that are both rather large. The small one, where the concert was held, was in a circular room that had the stage in the middle. Not only were the acoustics great, it was also interesting to be able to see the whole orchestra.

The first piece, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, was Herbrides Overture, the shortest piece, and very well done. It was followed by Frederic Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-minor, with Ayakp Fukutomi playing the piano. Although she did an extremely amazing job playing the piece (entirely from memory), it was my least favorite piece of the night. However, I'm not a fan of Chopin in general. The last piece was by far my favorite, for many reasons. To go out with a bang, the orchestra played Antonin Dvorak's Symphonie No. 9 in E-minor, more commonly known as his "New World Symphony." First of all, Dvorak is my favorite Romantic composer, probably because his Romantic style is the most down to earth, in my opinion, with his use of folk themes. I also particularly enjoy the New World Symphony because I have played it at least once in orchestra in high school. The Berlin Symphony did a fabulous job playing this piece and it was a perfect end to a very good concert.


Last night, I went to see Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg at the Deutscher Oper. Another modern musical venue, it is not as pompous as the old Staatsoper, and almost ever seat in the hall is a good one. I was very impressed that they stayed so true and classical to the Opera, not trying to change it and set it in another time or any other crazy ideas that they might have to try to improve the original. The orchestra was also very good, and must be given a lot of credit, since the opera is one of the longest in history, and they play the entire time.

As for the opera itself, I found it OK. Part of it may have been that it is in German, and although they had surtitles in German, it was old German, and I had no dictionary. And again, I am not the biggest fan of Romantic music; I finally realized five to six hours of Wagner is not especially the type of opera that I wanted to see. I knew that Die Meistersinger is one of the longest operas, but I didn't realize that it would start at four and be over at ten. This all being said, plus the fact that I had a German test to study for, made it so that I felt I had to leave the performance during the second intermission. I felt bad, and had it been under different circumstances, I would have stayed, but it just wasn't the day for it.