Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra "Big Bang"

You had me at hello, PSO! This was my first concert. I didn't know the conductor would lead everyone in the "Star Spangled Banner" as soon as he walked in. I got verklempt and couldn't sing. Then I could barely keep from laughing out loud when the audience jumped out of their seats at the beginning of Gandolfi's "Garden of Cosmic Speculation." It was an 8 minute piece covering the entire history of the universe, so it began with the big "Bang!" [sic] Thank you percussion section.

I knew the bang was coming. An hour before the performance I attended the lecture with the composer, Gandolfi, and assistant conductor, Thomas Hong, who told about his inspiration for the "Garden of Cosmic Speculation." Thomas Hong said next, to notice how the guest pianist for Pagnini's Rhapsody plays with tremendous power even though she is a very petite, Chinese woman. The inside scoop on Beethoven's 5th was that the conductor, Honeck, approached his preparation for the piece as if it were the first time. I was able to listen to it that way also.

The audience was very different from what I expected. Since I was there an hour early, I watched all the white haired patrons meander in and confidently decided that my husband and I will ALWAYS be the teenagers in this crowd. We still have peppered hair. The introvert in me was looking forward to my gallery being sparsely populated so I could sit by myself, but by 8pm it was standing room only and the overwhelming majority was people in their twenties and thirties. Clearly, to them the PSO (Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) is a rock star because at the end of the 5th, a young man in the middle of the gallery stood up, punched both fists in the air and hollered, just hollered, and it seemed like the rest of the gallery went with him.

Oh        my        goodness  !  !  !

What if every symphony performance is like this all season? What if PSO fans give it the same loyalty and enthusiasm the Steeler fans do? I'm not going to bother with reality, right now. I'm going to sit here with "what if" for a while.