The Symphony, Assholes

Went to the San Diego Symphony last night. It was sort of an interesting night. I show up to get my tickets, and I'm informed that for whatever reason, I'm the winner of a free San Diego Symphony fleece blanket. WOOHOO! Sort of a strange thing to be having a giveaway at a symphonic orchestral concert, but oh well.

The lineup for that night was as follows:

Zhou Long
Two Poems from Tang
- Hearing the Monk Xun Play the Qin
- The Song of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets

W. A. Mozart
Piano Concerto #16 in D Major, K. 451
- Allegro assai
- Andante
- Allegro di molto

Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Opus 47
- Moderato
- Allegretto
- Largo
- Allegro non troppo

Beautiful work the entire night. The orchestra was in rare form. The first piece is a contemporary work, last night was its San Diego debut. Really striking. There were four string soloists that were morphing their instruments into producing pseudo-Chinese tones, though the piece didn't fall in love with its eastern-ness, which was cool. The Mozart was well done; the piano soloist was quite a showman. And the Shostakovich was very very moving, the Largo movement in particular.

Though this was one of the best orchestral performances I'd ever seen, it was one of the worst audiences I've ever been a part of. I shit you not, at one point someone BLEW THEIR NOSE during the Moderato movement of the Shostakovich. What the fuck? It sounded like a hospital ward all night. Next time, I'm going to LA, although it might be the case that rather than blowing their nose, the people just leave early as the Symphony's climax approaches.