1. When I need to drive into downtown Spokane, I have a much easier and enjoyable time if I arrive while it's still light. I had a ticket to tonight's scintillating Spokane Symphony concert and I arrived in the vicinity of the Fox Theater well in advance of the concert -- in daylight.
I easily found parking on Jefferson near the Railroad Alley and, as I expected, in order to pay for my parking, I needed to use my phone, follow online instructions, and type in credit card information.
The late afternoon light helped me succeed.
My spot was just a couple of blocks from the theater and just a block from Soulful Soups and Spirits where I would eat a light dinner.
The last time I visited S. 111 Madison, I was with Patrick and Meagan and we enjoyed drinking cider together at what was then the One Tree Cider tasting room -- now relocated to its production warehouse just east of Division/Ruby at 125 E. Ermina.
I very much enjoyed the bowl of tomato basil soup accompanied by a house salad I ordered. Unfortunately, I arrived between when Soulful Soup ran out of bread and when their next batch would be coming out of the oven and be cooled off enough to slice.
No problem.
I'll try their bread next time and I'll treat myself to a different soup and, over time, try as many of their soups as I can.
2. Even though I went to the lecture on Thursday for this concert, I wanted to hear whatever the conductor had to say in his pre-concert lecture tonight.
Spokane writer Jess Walter was going to be narrating the guide to the orchestra as the concert's finale and he and Conductor James Rowe had a fun and insightful conversation about the similarities between music and language, whether spoken or written.
I've spent a bit of time on this blog writing some of my thoughts about the musical nature of language and the terrific comments Jess Walter made helped reassure me that my comments were at least in the ballpark!
3. In his Great Course lectures, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, Professor Robert Greenberg frequently returns to the point that many, if not most, classical composers structure their work around contrasts, whether contrasts in tempo, feeling, key signature, instrumentation, or other elements of a musical piece.
I thought tonight's program featured very enjoyable contrasts between the different compositions.
William Walton's opening piece featured a full orchestra playing lush and full-throated reimaginings of melodies originally composed by J. S. Bach.
The Fox Theater then started to feel like a church or a cathedral as the Spokane Chorale sang the Thomas Tallis piece that became the foundation for two small orchestras, one in the balcony, as they played Ralph Vaughan Williams' deeply emotional and spiritual reworking of Tallis' melody into his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Without a break, the smaller orchestra moved right into Paul Hindemith's mournful Trauermusik, a composition Hindemith wrote in six hours the day after the death of King George V for the BBC Orchestra to play the next day to express the grief of the nation. The Spokane Chorale then immediately deepened the sense of us being in a house of worship by singing Bach's "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit" or "I humbly come to your throne,/O God! and humbly beg you:/Do not turn your gracious face away/from me the poor sinner."
When the chorale ended its performance, the house lights went out and I felt like I was in a Compline service. The hall was absolutely silent and we all entered into a meditative, even prayerful, state and after a bit it became appropriate to applaud this moving series of soulful compositions.
Then another contrast took shape as the second half of the program was much lighter.
It opened with Grace Williams' Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes and the concert came to a fun and a stirring end as the orchestra played Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to Orchestra and we heard Jess Walter reading his reworking of the original narration, making it a Pacific Northwest guide. It was great fun as each section of the orchestra came to represent a different part of the northwest.
If you'd like to hear this concert, it will be replayed on KSFC-FM radio next Saturday, Feb. 7 at noon. You can stream KSFC by going to spokanepublicradio.org and clicking on the All Streams box and picking SPR Classical.
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