Israel Philharmonic orchestra in Rotterdam

I was at "de Doelen" concert hall in Rotterdam this week, went to hear the Israeli Philharmonic orchestra. We passed some security guards outside and inside the hall then I realized it must be a strange sight around here.

After the concert I learned that 2 weeks earlier on the orchestra’s tour in London, at the Royal Albert Hall there were demonstrations against Israel and the concert was disrupted a couple of times.

We got to our seats and I was surprised to see many empty seats. How sad. I felt very bad for the orchestra and the maestro Zubin Mehta.

The performance was beautiful. They played the Passacaglia by Webern followed by Iberia by Debussy in the first part. Both pieces are from late romantic- modern period.  In the second part they played Mahler’s 5^th symphony, it was fantastic! Beautiful performance, we enjoyed it very much.

And then there was silence...

The night after the storm, clear sky and (almost) full moon...

Open air concert all night long - 10/09/2011

Last night, the sky over NL gave us a world class performance that lasted a good couple of hours of amazing scenery along with exquisite sounds. 

It came from the south; light thunders were heard in the distance, flashes of lights between the clouds. Within less than an hour the whole sky around Utrecht were clear and shiny as if it was broad day light; 

lightning’s from all over directions lit up the sky accompanied by the hard sound of tropical rain hammering on the roof, loud bangs of explosions as the thunders were sitting right above us, then the rain turned into a hail storm with hail balls the size of 3-4 cm, the wind got stronger which added a soft background sound to the strong, hard sound of the solo instruments.

The show is highly recommended, in case there will be a second performance…