An evening with Izzy

Sorry, I didn't really mean to call Itzhak Perlman "Izzy", but it sounded more interesting.

So, yes, today finally was the concert I was most excited about this season: Itzhak Perlman recital (well, it was the one I was most excited about because it's probably the only one that I really knew I was getting when I chose what I was going to watch). It was a violin and piano recital with Rohan De Silva at the piano (interesting name for a person born in Sri Lanka).

Well, it was quite amazing. But not life changing. Yes, Itzhak Perlman is funny and knows how to play the violin, but I felt that it was missing some emotional attachment with the public, between the musicians and on the pieces themselves. It really seemed like Mr. Perlman was running everything in auto-pilot and Mr. De Silva was just following along very competently.

Maybe it's all back to my inability to connect very well with music any more, but I was impressed but not moved. I left the concert hall a little disappointed.

One interesting thing, though, was the public. Seattle is a very politicized city, so the most common thing that people were talking about is that Itzhak Perlman played at the inauguration with Yo Yo Ma. I almost said: "so what? Who cares about who is playing at the inauguration? It's not that it's a venue where they present and criticize high art!" Anyway, I didn't...

Other things that I saw (and took notes):

* The huge diversity of people, from old-timers that probably followed Mr. Perlman's carrier since the beginning; to young people wearing jeans and eating protein bars inside the concert hall.
* People that really don't go to concerts, but were trying to impress their dates with a US$75/seat concert with a lot of useless and sometimes incorrect knowledge, like the incorrect way of pronouncing Sri Lanka.
* People amazed by a piano tuner in the intermission verifying and adjusting the tuning of the piano.

Anyway, I didn't want to make it not as exciting, but I am now suffering a little from the trivialization of a good experience by writing it out. Suddenly the things that I wasn't so excited about became so much more important than listening to one of the most important violinists of my lifetime (and my parent's lifetime).