The Scottish Symphony

Jamie is home for the weekend for a big rowing competition at Strathclyde Park Loch. It is lovely to see him, and I got an extra ticket for him to the concert at the Royal Concert Hall that we had already planned to go to this evening. Kyle came too so there were six of us. The concert was Mendelssohn's Symphony number 3, otherwise known as The Scottish Symphony. It was part of the RSNO "Naked Classics" season. In the first half of the programme a presenter called Paul Rissman told us a bit about Felix Mendelssohn's life and then took us through each of the four movements of the symphony. He projected pictures and written music onto a large screen, and used light to highlight different notes and phrases and explained what the themes were. He got the orchestra to play the bits he was talking about. At one point he showed how a short phrase in the third movement repeats a lot by getting the different parts of the orchestra to stand up when they played it, so they were all bobbing up and down which was very amusing and made his point very clearly. This was ideal for someone like me who likes music but knows very little about it; I found it fascinating. For example some parts are more "Scottish" sounding than others, and when he pointed it out you could totally hear that. Then in the second half, after we had all refreshed ourselves with drinks at the interval, the orchestra played the whole symphony, and you could hear how it all hung together. It was excellent and all of the boys said they enjoyed it too.