The Rite Of Spring

So, a few housemates and I went to this Malaysia Philharmonic Orchestra entitled Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in KLCC. This is the first time I'm listening to ochestra and I was expecting myself to enjoy every single bit of it.


This ochestra was lead by Thierry Fischer as the conductor and Andreas Haefliger as the pianist. And frankly speaking, I don't know why do they need a conductor when they can play all of the instruments themselves when in the end, the conductor got all the credits. Hahaha! Mind you, it's my lame stupid naive opinion so bear with me as I'm pretty a noob in this kind of events, especially when it comes to music.

As you can see from the above picture, it is actually illegal to take pictures inside but for the sake of YOU, I risked myself!!! the settings are just like what you have seen in the movies.

And amazingly, the seats are almost 95% full and I estimated their revenue per show are about RM 40k ~ RM 60k. Yes, it is THAT much. Let's continue to the music.

The first music played was the Overture: Roman Carnival (Op.9) by Hector Berlioz which lasts for 9 minutes. Because it was the first time, I think it's rather what is being played in those Titanic kind of movies. And I was like O_o as I still can't blend into the music.

Next coming up was a 40-minute play. They played Piano Concerto No.5 in E Flat (Op.73) - "The Emperor" by Ludwig Van Beethoven. Allegro, Adagio un poco mosso and Rondo(Allegro) are included in the play. When they started playing the Adagio un poco mosso then only I starting to know the music better and float along with the tunes.

Once finished playing, people started to clap. Loudly. And it's not ordinary clappings. It's that kind of claps that you can hear very very clearly, very rigid, of those that you can heard of in the movies, too. So the conductor and pianist bowed and show their appreciation to the crowd and went to backstage. The crowd kept on clapping.

"Eh? Why they still clapping one?", I asked myself and a friend beside me. We have no answers.

The pianist came out again. The claps were much more solid and loud. He bowed, a lady come out from backstage and gave the pianist a bouquet of flowers. He thanked her, turned around and gave the flower to a violinist(do you call people who play violin violinist?!) behind him. He went in again. Claps still going on. He came out again. He bowed and thanked again, and this time, for real he didn't come out anymore.

It was then a 20 minutes interval break, which I didn't know it is supposed to be in between the ochestra. We went out and took some photos but due to bad lighting, too bad.

Then, it was the highlight of the day, 34-minute play entitled The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Listening to this play really reminds me a lot a lot of Disney cartoons. From the music itself, I can see images but yeah, probably I watched too much movies and too rich in imagination. This play is somehow touching, and very very nice. After 34 minutes, the crowd went siao and clapped again. The whole process of the pianist went through, had been repeated again, again, and again. I supposed it's their tradition huh.