Pacifica Quartet

Friday night at services someone asked me if I would join him Monday night for a chamber-music concert. (He'd been given two tickets and his wife wasn't able to make it.) I enjoy string quartets, so I said sure.

( review )

One thing that surprised me is how seldom the musicians turned pages in the music. For the most part, they were doing entire movements without page turns. Now granted, each musician probably has only his part, and the stand can accommodate three pages (though most of the music was in two-page spreads, at least in the viola player's music, the only music I could look right down on), but still. It's got to be pretty densely packed, assuming there's not serious memorization happening. And the musicians were moving around a fair bit (swaying, I mean, not getting up and dancing :-) ), so it couldn't have been written too small or they wouldn't have been able to see it.

I was a little surprised by the length of the concert. As I said, I don't know much about classical music, so I went in thinking "how long can a string quartet be? 20 minutes?" The Mendelssohn was about 35 minutes (if the concert started on time, and it was close); I didn't note times on the other two. The concert ran about 2:10 including the intermission (and the intermission wasn't that long). So much for my prediction to Dani that I'd probably be done about the same time he was done with choir practice. :-)