Ode to Joy Indeed

This weekend I was in Boston (Hi Jay!) - my mom flew her little brood in to catch the Boston Symphony.  We have a minor tradition of doing Tanglewood every couple of summers for Beethoven's 9th Symphony (although one year we did the 1812 instead) but this year my mom wanted to do a nice steak place afterward so Boston it was.  (HINT FOR THE GUYS: TANGLEWOOD.  FALL.  EXPENSIVE.  BUT DO IT FOR THE LADY. JUST SHUT UP AND DO IT.)

Worst cabbies ever?  I had 'em.  But it was very nice to see my family, as we're scattered throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.  And Flemings serves up one NICE piece of steerflesh.  And out waitress was awesome.

I'd never been to Symphony Hall before, and it was very impressive.  We had good back-balcony seats and the acoustics were great.

When you bring the Tanglewood Chorus to your auditorium for the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th, you tend to look for other chorale pieces for them to do, and accordingly the program Friday opened up with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.  Embarrassingly, I don't know much about Stravinsky except the parts of the Rites of Spring that Disney used for Fantasia, but after listening to his Symphony of Psalms, I can confidently say: The Strav-monster liked him some oboes.

I was thinking about taking an extra day and visiting my blog-partner but he'd picked this weekend to run up and down a muddy mountain with his wife.

Selfish bastard, that one.


Anyway, the Ninth.  Wow.  4th time I've seen it live, and it still wrenches at me.  Thank you, Ludwig Van.