A Night at the SPCO

It's been a long year for classical music enthusiasts in the Twin Cities metro as both the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) and the Minnesota Orchestra have been in significant labor disputes that have made the local music scene silent since last fall.  Fortunately, the SPCO settled their dispute this past month and are now playing great music.  As an SPCO member, I was gratified this happened.

So with the SPCO playing, I decided it was a good time to have some fellowship and attend a concert.  So a man with a strong affinity of the music of Felix Mendelssohn, I decided to attend the following concert:

So I invited 11 other fine folks to come along for this experience.   After most of us ate dinner at a local pizza shop, we walked about 10 minutes in Downtown St. Paul to the Ordway to watch the show.  

View from my seat

How did the concert go?  Well, the first five classical pieces were well played and were quite pleasant to listen to.  The Mendelssohn and Faure pieces were very, very good with lively melodies and emotional eloquence. So the first 70

 However, the last piece, written by the composer, was waaayyyy too modern for me.  The piece was suppose to note the beginning of the Torah,  yet I have to say I really couldn't tell the beginning from the middle or the end.  To me, it just sounded like a cacophony of sounds involving a piano, harp, percussion and violin.  I think I'll stick to my pre-twentieth century pieces, thank you.

But overall, it was a fantastic evening with fantastic company.  I hope to do it more often.

Next season starts this fall, but I'll take suggestions on what concerts I should purchase tickets for group gatherings.  Check out the calendar on http://content.thespco.org/events/calendar/2013/5/ and get back to me with suggestions.