Philips Concert 2006

Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
October 12, 2006

Starting from year 2003, we regularly had been invited by Philips, the generous employer of my wife, for end-of-year concert in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. It had always been a classical music concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with qualified conductors and solists, performing fine classical pieces.

In the past years the concerts were held around end of October or in November, but this year it was a bit earlier. Fortunate for us, it happened exactly on our third wedding anniversary. A nice gift from Philips!

The event was started at 6.30 in the evening, and I arrived on time. I traveled by train from my office in Den Bosch and followed by tram in Amsterdam, alighted from the tram in the beautiful spot between the Concertgebouw and greeny Museumplein with nice view of the Rijksmuseum.

My wife arrived some moments earlier by the bus arranged by Philips in Eindhoven, and she was already in dinner queue when I arrived. It was the standard ritual: a buffet dinner at 6.30 followed by nice music at 8.15. We had the similar dinner as last year, with nice selection of appetizers: smoked salmon salad, beef carpaccio, tuna salad, and two different pasta salads. The main dishes were penne in mayonnaise, sausages, and meatballs in tomato sauce.

After filling our stomachs and nice chats during the coffee and tea, we entered the hall to start the musical part. It was still an amazing view entering the hall, with decorated ceiling and balcony and the grand organ above the stage.
That evening we enjoyed the 'Spanish-oriented' pieces by Wagenaar and Lalo before the break and Scottish Symphony by Mendelssohn for the ending.

After a short speech of Gerard Kleisterlee, the Philips CEO, the first piece was opened with castanets sound and we enjoyed the Spanish nuance of the Prelude to De Cid op.27 by Wagenaar, a Dutch composer. It was a pity that it was a pretty short piece.

The second piece was the famous Symphonie espagnole in D minor, op.21 for violin and orchestra, of Edouard Lalo. It was actually not a symphony, but a violin concerto. During his time, composers like to model their concertos after symphonies in which the soloist and orchestra were equal partners. Lalo went one step further, provocatively omitting the word 'concerto' in this piece, hence the somewhat misleading title.

The work contained five very colourful and highly virtuosic movements. All explored the beauty of violin to its fullest. The most symphonic movement, the first one, had a very catchy theme one would never forget once listened to it. The second movement started very light owing to the sweetness of the violin's high tone, but later developed back into similar Spanish rigor as the first movement. A sweet dark habanera rhythm dominated the third movement. The solemnity of the fourth movement, the only slow movement, was mostly sad although here and there sweetness and grandness appeared. The symphony final movement had a grand rigorous character of Beethoven alike and only managed a bit of Spanish flavour. The movement was closed with a special way of playing violin where the violinist simultaneously plucked (pizzicato) and bowed (arco) the strings.

After an uneventful break, the program continued with Mendelssohn 'Scottish' symphony no 3. Interestingly, the orchestra seemed to play the whole symphony without breaks. Perhaps they did not want hand clapping between movements as in the first part of the program. The symphony were very melodious but mostly very atmospheric. Apart from a familiar movement (probably the second), there was no theme easy enough to mumble home. Despite that, the audience honored the orchestra with a standing ovation at the end of the performance.

Cautious of missing the bus going back to Eindhoven, we hurried out the concert hall before the clapping died out. After queuing for wardrobe, we landed ourselves in the second bus back to Philips High Tech Campus Eindhoven and arrived back at some minutes pass midnight.