I attended California Philharmonic’s Basically Beatles concert on July twelfth. The concert was held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Victor Vener was the music director and there was a tribute band of the Beatles there as well. It was the first time I had ever been to the Walt Disney Concert Hall and I thought it was really neat inside. It was unfortunate that we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside because the organ there was gorgeous. The picture here is of me and my friend outside of the concert hall. My friend play violin in an orchestra at her college so I thought it was helpful to have her come to the concert with me. When we were inside she was able to point out different things to me which was nice. She pointed out that the instruments were arranged differently. Apparently the second violins were on the outside of the cellos, so instead of having the first and second violins next to each other they were on opposite sides of the stage. We weren’t sure why they had set it up that way, but once the second half of the concert started, they moved over next to the first violins.
The first song that they played was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor. Victor Vener called it his own “Battle of the Bands” because he had the orchestra playing as well as the organ. For the first part of the piece the organ and orchestra took turns playing and the second part they played together. It was a really neat sound to mix the organ with all the orchestra. There were times when it was hard to hear the orchestra over the organ though, but overall I really did enjoy that piece. The second thing that they played was selections for La Cage Aux Folles. I thought this piece was fun to listen to, it was very upbeat, and obviously had a show tune feel. Victor Vener explained that he played the Bach piece first then the pieces from La Cage Aux Folles to contrast the heavy and light sounds, which I thought worked well. I think it gives the audience a little break from the heavy classical sounds. We were able to listen to a world premiere of Rodger Allen Ward’s Symphony No. 1. Victor Vener explained to us that like Mozart, Ward wrote the music for a specific musician and not for the instrument itself. I thought that was an interesting way to write music. The piece was split into three parts: meditative, excited; accordion-fold passacaglia; and brilliant, with fanfares. I did not like the first part of this piece at all, it did not sound like it went together. The music didn’t seem to flow well together. The second part was much better I thought. It seemed to have a romantic, sweet sound. Finally, the third part was alright. It had that “fanfare” sound that was written, however I didn’t find it all that great. It sounded like something I had heard before.
After intermission they had the Beatles portion of the concert. It was a lot of fun to watch. First, the Fab Four Beatles tribute band came out and sang about four songs by themselves. Really fun songs and they got the audience into to it, which made the rest of the concert much more fun. After the tribute band played, the orchestra did a medley of the songs “Norwegian Wood”, “For No One”, “Eleanor Rigby”, and “Penny Lane”. I thought that they did an excellent job with those songs; I thought it was awesome how much the orchestra sounded like the songs. For the last part of the concert the tribute band came back on stage and the band and the orchestra played together. Victor Vener explained that when the Beatles had written the songs they had orchestra instruments record with them so that was exactly what they did for this concert. Not all the instruments played during every song, and sometimes when they did play it wasn’t for very long. It was a fun concert to go to, definitely not what I had expected at all. I really enjoyed the mix of songs that were played at the beginning of the concert and I liked how they ended the concert with light songs.
