Indianapolis Symphony

Last night, I went to the “French night” at the Indianapolis Symphony with the French Club from Jeff. They plan this event specifically for high school students who are studying French, and they start the evening with a tour of the theatre and explanation of the architecture and decor and then one of the musicians speaks to the students about the music they will play that evening. We were really fortunate to hear from one of the first chair violinists about the show last night, and he did a really wonderful job of describing the music and giving us certain things to listen for throughout the evening. One thing that he said which really struck me was that French music has a certain beauty – and all the other elements of the music are sort of subordinate or contribute to that beauty. He talked about Spanish music and how it is amazingly coloful and vibrant, but French music is more subtle and has an overall beauty. It really prepared me as a listener for the actual music, and I was really able to appreciate Debussey, Ravel and Berlioz that much more because of this really fascinating introduction. We were also really fortunate to hear an extremely talented solo violinist who was there as a guest for a few days perform a really complicated piece by a Polish composer, I believe. It was really quite stunning. It was just a great evening, and I’m really glad that places like the Indianapolis Symphony offer these amazing opportunities to high school students.