I went to the TSO again on Saturday, this time to hear Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”. I had never heard it before, now was I a fan of Mahler’s works. I think I had a record (yes, vinyl) of one of his compositions back in the day, which I didn’t like too much.

This time we tried a different strategy. Instead of buying tickets in advance, we showed up two hours early and bought tickets at the box office. But, unfortunately for us, we couldn’t get floor seats. Maybe it was because we went on a Saturday (last time was a Sunday) and there was more demand, but even the balcony seats were almost sold out by then.

We ended up with seats to the left of the orchestra, above the trumpets, trombones and bass singers (of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir). For the orchestra enthusiast, these are probably the worst seats in the house; but for a budding aficionado of the TSO, it was pretty neat. I was almost behind the orchestra and could see them in action, including the crazy antics of the conductor. I suppose the sound suffered because the instruments were pointing away from me, but I can’t tell (yet?).

The piece itself was not so entertaining as I wasn’t familiar with it. It helped that the programme had a description of the piece, particularly when several percussion, trumpets, and french horn musicians quickly left the stage. They were to play, from off stage, a counter-orchestra to the main one; which to the casual observer would have been quite confusing!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: classical, tso