SYMPHONY FOR THE COMMON MAN

Friday night D and I went on a date. Instead of the usual dinner and drinks, D suggested that we do something a little different and see if there was anything on at the Opera House. It turns out that the Sydney Symphony were performing Copland's Symphony No.3 along with Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a  Faun and Takemitsu's From me Flows what you call Time. I love 20th Century classical music and pretty much anything French so the line up sounded good.

We were seated up the back with the crowds in the cheap seats (row X!) but it didn't matter. We could see the whole orchestra from our aerial view, along with the audience and empty seats in the not-so-cheap section. (Funny that!) Debussy was lovely as always and Takemitsu's piece was very interesting. I recall studying it at Uni. Sections seemed very familiar especially the flute and percussion solos. I think D enjoyed it also. We were advised before the start of the performance that it would be recorded for radio airplay and so we were on our best audience behavior trying to keep coughing etc to a minimum. Although during the Takemitsu there were gasps and ahhs from the audience as two of the 5 soloists walked over to the coloured ribbons hanging either side of the stage and tugged them to reveal bells at the top. (I wonder if they will edit the audience out of the recording?) The ribbons; white, blue, red, yellow and green, represent the the five Buddhas at the centre of the mandala and symbolise water - blue,  fire - red, earth - yellow, wind - green and nothingness - white.


Afterwards we had a couple of (very expensive) drinks by Sydney harbour then caught the train back into our neighbourhood and had a couple more reasonably priced ones there. We ended up at The Green Room Lounge in Enmore were there was an exhibition of Rock and Roll shots taken by French music photographer Emmy Etie as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. Some great shots taken over a number of years of artists such as the White Stripes, The Cramps and Joan Jett.

A lovely date night. Wish we had time to do it every weekend!