What was the First Orchestral Concert that you Attended?

[Stillhomewardbound]

Didn't he (BT) do a Lerner & Lowe album also? They could have got the piper in the for the Brigadoon numbers.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Possibly, back on the old Radio 3 boards I will have waxed lyrical about the Robert Meyer concerts I mentioned earlier.

The thing is, they did just what they were intended to do ie. introduce a young audience to the classical canon and enervate them in their enthusiasm.

I know it worked because decades later I still talk about them.

Six concerts between Autumn and Spring at 11am on a Saturday morning and broadcast later (?) on Radio 3. I believe it was the 1974/75 season I attended.

In the season I attended the hosts were David Munro introducing Early Music, John Georgiadis on chamber music, Anthony Hopkins on the symphonic greats ... and for the other three my memory fails me rather.

I've done an online search but I can't find any listing for them. The Radio Times Genome throws listings up in a wholly arbitrary so as to be as good as useless.

[Steerpike]

My first concert is now a mixture of clear memories surrounded by a good deal of mist. I think most of this is right:

RPO conducted by Massimo Freccia, RFH around 1957/8 (was the hall Royal then?)
Verdi, Forza del Destino overture
Rachmaninov, Variations on a theme by Paganini (Peter Katin??)
Tchaikovsky, Symphony 6.

The bits I’m most sure about are the venue, conductor and the Verdi. I’m least sure about the Rachmaninov.

I’d love to know how right my memory is. Was anyone there and got a programme? I’ve Googled but can’t find details. It would be lovely if the major orchestras and/or the major halls could put their whole archives on line – would lead to hours of geriatric nostalgia, for me at least.

Anyway, the experience worked – I’m still going!

[Daniel]

The soloist was Moura Lympany and when she came to a rest after her first passage, she roared into the front rows ... 'BE QUIET!!'

She seems quite formidable. When I was at school Moura Lympany was coming to play the Grieg piano concerto with the local County orchestra in their new Civic Centre home, and I was asked to play the solo part in rehearsals. There were quite a few, as there were very keen to get it right for such a big name at the time I think.
When she came for the final one I was introduced to her and she was very friendly. She then sat down and played the first few pages with the orchestra, then stopped, sounding exasperated and shouted 'No, no, no, that's not how you phrase a piece of music!' (or very close) and proceeded to rather brutally tell the conductor how to do his job.

It may have been a great musical learning experience or not for everyone involved, I can't really remember, but mainly recall how the conductor quietly survived being told off like a five-year-old.

I can't remember which was my first orchestral concert, The Rite of Spring at the RFH in the mid 70's would have been pretty close. I remember the energy of the performance, but not sadly the performers.

[Once Was 4]

Didn't he (BT) do a Lerner & Lowe album also? They could have got the piper in the for the Brigadoon numbers.

Yes; that one was done in Leeds Town Hall a couple of years later. I was just booked for one of the sessions and turned up to find a folder of 4th horn parts all marked 'Tacet'! This is a dodge which I had encountered earlier (when copyists still produced handwritten scores and parts). They were paid by the page; it did make you think that you were in the wrong job sometimes.

[Maclintick]

1969 Salzburg Summer Festival:
Mozart: Symphony no.25 in G minor K.187
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.19 in F K.459
Mozart: Symphony no.40 in G minor K.550

VPO/Christoph Von Dohnanyi
Alfred Brendel (piano)

This is the first one I remember. The glow of the Mozarteum, the unrivalled Mozartian sensibility of the VPO, the silent disdain of the full-dress & jewel-bedecked audience towards our hastily-donned lower-middle-class English "best". Tickets were £5 - a King's Ransom in them days - & we were camped out on the Gaisberg, with thunderstorms threatening to wash our tent away...

[Dave2002]

I think my first was a children's concert in the Philharmonic Hall, with the RLPO conducted by Trevor Harvey. I have a vague recollection of one of Orb and Sceptre, Crown Imperial or similar. I thought it was fantastic, and wanted to spend the rest of my life doing "that stuff" - which I have only managed to do somewhat half heartedly. When I was a few years older I started going to the "proper" concerts, and also several seasons of chamber music run by the Rodewald Concert Society. I believe the society still exists, but the concerts are now in St Georges Hall.