Saturday, March 11, 2006

Pinch of the Past

Sometimes in my mommy life I forget what my previous life once was. Last weekend I received a small glimpse, enough to remind me of what my husband and I had in common to form a connection between us.

Last Friday was our anniversary. The entire night was absolutely free. Some friends baby sat. We used gift certificates to see "Fun with Dick & Jane" at the $1 theatre. We used gift cards to eat at Outback Steakhouse. Overall it was a fun night.

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Saturday morning we tried to work on the bathroom. That afternoon my husband had his quartet rehearsal. It was a nice sunny afternoon, while my daughter was taking a nap, my son and I worked in the backyard planting some daylilly seedlings. When my husband came home from his rehearsal I was still in the backyard and he started to work on the bathroom again. The phone rang. It was an older couple that we know. They offered us tickets to go to the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. They would even babysit our kids. Only catch is that the concert started in an hour and a half. We quickly got ready, took our kids over to their house and picked up our tickets.

It was a wonderful night of beautiful music. Throughout the first piece, The Fair Melusina by Mendelssohn I kept thinking to myself how crisp, clean and clear the group sounded. I couldn't figure out if it was the hall, or our seats way up in the balcony or if this group was really good. The last symphony concert I had attended was nearly four years previous in Phoenix. This group sounded so different from how I had remembered the Phoenix Symphony. During the brief intermission before the Flute Concerto started my husband and I had an intellectually musical conversation regarding the last piece. He confirmed my thoughts. This group was WAY better than the Phoenix Symphony had been.

After the Mendelssohn piece a Flute Concerto was performed. It was written in 1993 by Christopher Rouse for Carol Wincenc. She was the one that performed it that night. The piece involves 5 different movements where the music goes from atonal to tonal and back. It was very interesting and virtuosistic (if thats even a word). When the piece was over we sat back in amazement. It sounded like something from a movie score. Very interesting.

There was again a small intermission. We enjoyed the time to read through the program. Read the origins of the compositions and the composers that wrote them. The final piece of the night was Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Symphonie Pathetique by Tchaikovsky. My husband is a huge lover of Tchaikovsky music. Quartet, symphony, ballets. I also enjoy Tchaikovsky, and the emotion and beauty of this piece was quite overwhelming.

We sat mesmerized by the music at the end of the concert. Relishing the opportunity to listen to such wonderful music played by such a magnificent orchestra. Then we returned to the present and that we had two small children that we needed to get to bed. We rushed back to pick them up and hurried them off to dreamland.

The next day, Sunday was to be the afternoon of my first concert with the Concert Band I had joined a few months previous. I was nervous and excited to be a part of a group again, and to be performing for the first time in 7 years. The concert went off rather well, I personally could have done better. I was nervous, and of course a better reed would have definitely helped!

Sunday evening after my children had gone to bed I thought about the weekend. How fun and exciting it was to be involved in the world of music again. For a small moment I had a glimmer of memory of life as a music major, running around the snow building crazy. Like a chicken with its... never mind, you know the phrase. :-) But not even that, just the opportunity to be involved in good music again.

The tickets for the NMSO concert were only $10. We discussed while we were sitting enchanted in that concert hall that was easily something that we could do more often. I think we've both reached that point when we need to remember what was important to us in our previous life and bring a little of that back into our present day lives. My husband is composing again. He's playing in a string quartet. I'm practicing again, and also playing in a concert band. Its time to bring in that third part of a musician's life back into practice. Music Appreciation class anyone?
Posted by ABQ Mom :: 3/11/2006 11:19:00 AM :: 7 Comments:

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