A monumental milestone was recently reached in our marriage. For the first time in over five years of marriage, Shelly went with me to a symphony concert. Not an NSO Pops Christmas concert, but a real live National Symphony Orchestra concert featuring music composed by dead Europeans I studied in my music courses at BYU. This was technically a Father's Day gift, but it was worth the wait.

We went to an all-French program with music by some modern composer, a piano concerto by Ravel, and Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. We actually sat in the choir seats behind the orchestra. We were on the first row, so we could lean over the edge and look at the bassists' music, as they were standing right in front of us. It was an interesting perspective on the concert. We could see the facial expressions of the conductor (once, after the trombones hit a tricky passage, he looked over at them with this look of triumph, as if to say, "Yeah, guys! You nailed it!" I wonder if they were having trouble with it during rehearsal.) The balance was a little off - the French horns were pointing straight at us and therefore were a little louder than usual, and for the concerto, the piano was opened out toward the audience, and that combined with the fact that the whole orchestra was between us and the piano, it was a little hard to hear when the orchestra was playing loudly.

But the music was great. The modern piece was OK. Both of us really liked the Ravel concerto (Piano Concerto in G Major), which we had never heard before. But I particularly liked the slow second movement, which I found to be moody and beautiful, and Shelly preferred the flashy third movement for its theatrics. Shelly didn't care for the second movement, and I thought the third was just a little too theatrical. Interesting, eh?

But then came the Symphonie Fantastique - the reason we (that is, I) chose this particular concert for my Father's Day gift, and the reason I was willing to wait till January. My dad's favorite composer is Berlioz, and when I was a child, he had a habit of going into the living room in the evenings, turning off all the lights, leaning back in his reclining chair, and listening to records of Symphonie Fantastique and Berlioz's Requiem (also Orff's Carmina Burana). I had no idea at the time, but I think that even though I was never actively involved in these listening sessions, this is one of the most influential things my dad ever did for me. That habit played a great part in developing my musical tastes and propelling my interest in music.

So hearing this great music performed live for the first time was a thrill. I had no idea the oboe solo in the third movement was to be performed offstage, but off he went. And the brass fanfare in the fourth movement was one of those rare musical moments where your body physically reacts to the power of the movement - it's more than just chills down your spine. I had tried to prepare Shelly beforehand by telling her the story of the symphony, this being the first major work of explicit program music. She claimed she would have liked it better if she hadn't known it was about a drug trip, but I enjoyed the guillotined head falling into the basket and could imagine the witches dancing wildly. The dies irae in the fifth movement rocked.

We're going to a performance of the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony in a couple of weeks (my birthday present). If I'm lucky, I can get Shelly to be willing to make a habit out of this.