New York Philharmonic Open Rehearsal – Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; Radu Lupu, piano. January 31, 2013.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, First Tier (Right side, $0.)

All-Beethoven Program (1770-1827)

Overture to Die Geschopfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus), Op. 43 (1800-01).

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 (ca. 1795/1800).

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1804-08).

Our friend CS’s son-in-law gave him this ticket, I ended up getting it since he couldn’t use it.  I set my alarm for 7 am, and when awaken decided to get up and get going for the 9:45 am concert (instead of going back to sleep.)

What I want to record here are some of the observations I made during the rehearsal, which lasted until 12:15 pm or so.  It started at about 10 am, with a 20 minute intermission.  The pieces in the program add up to less than 70 minutes.

They didn’t practice per the sequence listed in the program.  It was more practical to do the two orchestral pieces first, before bringing out the piano for the concerto.

I was not familiar with the first piece – it was from a ballet Beethoven wrote (and I didn’t know he wrote ballet music.)  It was quite short a about 5 minutes.  I was surprised at how often Dohnanyi had the orchestra repeat a particular transition passage in the music, at one point asking the concertmaster Dicterow play that passage.  I thought at that rate it would take a long time to get through the rehearsal.

The other two pieces are familiar Beethoven orchestral pieces.  In these instances Dohnanyi mostly just ran through the pieces with some isolated comments.

I chose the First Tier seat because it commanded a good view of the action on stage.  Unfortunately, since I saw Dohnanyi’s back most of the time, I couldn’t get what he was saying to the orchestra.  That might have been interesting.

The last time I went to an orchestra rehearsal was about 40 years ago when I played for the Cornell Symphony.  I remember (vaguely) sitting around not paying attention to what the conductor was saying to other sections of the orchestra.  I wonder if a similar situation obtains here

Anne and I actually have tickets for the Friday concert.  Since she is in Boston, and I didn’t want to go by myself (and to somehow dispose of the extra ticket), I gave the tickets to Ellie and Kuau, telling them that this is a rather “lightweight” program that should be quite enjoyable.

Overall, this “sausage making” process was quite interesting to observe, and I got to hear the entire program, albeit with an occasional interruption here and there.