On December 8, 2012 I went to a performance for kids at Symphony Hall in downtown Chicago. The title of the performance was It’s Time to Play.
It was different from other concerts because Edwin Outwater, the conductor, talked to us about the music he was conducting instead of just playing the music.
My favorite piece was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Mvt. 1. I liked it because I’ve heard it before and the conductor said that you should picture a stormy night sky in your head because that is what Beethoven is intending to do. One of the things that the conductor talked to the audience about it that Beethoven wanted to make his music suspencful so that audience would be like, “I wonder what is going to happen next?”
You can listen to this piece here (this is a different orchestra playing the song):
Also, there were members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing the instruments and they had a lot of instruments. Some of the instruments were oboes, trombones, bassoons, timpani, violins, violas, cellos, french horns, tubas, and a computer. In the last piece called Mothership by Mason Bates there was a computer that made sound effects and each key had a different sound effect on the computer.
I think that they did this performance to entertain and inform. I think that they wrote this to inform because the conductor he told us what the composers meant for us to think while the music was playing in your head. Like in one of the pieces Beethoven wanted you to think of a thunder storm at night. Charles Ives wanted to make you laugh when you heard his Symphony No. 2, Mvt. 4. It was entertaining because in the piece that Charles Ives wrote he would take a wrong note and stick it at the end of the song and it wouldn’t sound right. Before the performance the conductor asked us to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat and then make the most obnoxious sound at the last note. It was really funny.
Some of the other pieces that they played that I didn’t tell you about in the other paragraphs were Symphony No. 6, Mvt. 1 by Franz Joseph Haydn and Symphony No. 94 (Surprise), Mvt. 2 by Franz Joseph Haydn also. There was also Symphony No. 4, Mvt. 4 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and also Symphony No. 9, Mvt. 3 by Antonin Dvorak. And the last one was Symphony No. 6, Mvt. 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven.
If you have a child I would recommend going to this next concert that they have on Friday, May 3, 2013 at 10:15am and 12:00pm. It is called Get Up and Dance. They also have another performance on March 15, 2013 at 10:15am and 12:00pm called Now Let’s Sing. I would recommend you take your child because the conductor talks to you instead of just playing the music. If he just played the music you wouldn’t know what was going on. This is the website to find out information http://cso.org/Institute/ChildrenAndFamilies/FamilyMatinee.aspx
Picture from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alsal/6536633865/lightbox/
IMHO...thoughts from a Windy City kid 