Share the moving moments you’ve experienced at the classical music concert hall or opera house!

 

 

Back in about 1984 I heard that Luciano Pavarotti was going to appear at the free “Opera in the Park” concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (I lived in The Haight).  I wasn’t much into opera back then, but I went so that I could get a photo of Pavarotti.  This was back when Opera in the Park was still held at the bandshell in GG Park (between the De Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences); there weren’t thousands of people in those years, so I could get right up front. 

 

I was standing literally at the foot of the stage (on the right) when then Director of the Opera, Kurt Herbert Adler, announced his apologies that Luciano Pavarotti would not be there that day.  But, Adler said, “we have a very special treat for you.”  And he announced Monserrat Caballe. 

 

I didn’t know who this lady was, and was ready to leave.  But, I thought, let me get a picture anyway. 

 

She started to sing. 

 

After a few minutes, I checked myself, and I *literally* had goose bumps on my arms and my mouth was hanging open in awe (I’m not exaggerating).  “How in the world can such sounds come out of a human being??!,” I thought. 

 

I think I was so hypnotized that I never even took a photo (I recently looked for it).  And the NEXT day I bought an LP of Monserrat Caballe, and that same album was also the first CD I ever bought. 

 

One of my favorite, and most recent, great moments in music was during a performance of the San Francisco Symphony.  It was my first time in Davies Symphony Hall and I was going to hear one of my favorite piano concertos...Prokofiev's Third.  I was enjoying the great seats and the knowledgeable crowd (impressed that they never seemed to applaud at the 'wrong' time).  Yefim Bronfman was the soloist, and I had never heard him play live.  Well, if you know the Prokofiev 3, you know it's a complete barnburner of a piece.  At the end of the first movement, the crowd ERUPTED into spontaneous cheers and applause...as if the sound had been ripped from their throats involuntarily!  The conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas that night, turned around...acknowledged the applause, gave Bronfman a bow and then gave the orchestra a bow. Everyone smiled a little sheepishly, mopped their brows, straightened their jackets, took a deep breath....and plunged into the rest of the concerto.   It was an electric moment. 

Every year, the Boston Pops Orchestra gives a July 4th Concert in the Bandshell on the Esplanade along the banks of the Charles River.  You may have seen these concerts on TV.  When I lived in Boston, I attended one of these concerts (actually, there are so many THOUSANDS of people on the 4th, I instead went to the concert the day before).  

The day of the concert was very warm (and a bit humid) with a few clouds in the sky.  Toward evening, as the sun was beginning to set, and the clouds above the river were turning bright orange, the orchestra played the Largo slow movement from Dvorak's 9th Symphony ("From The New World").  This is the movement for which a student of Dvorak, Williams Arms Fisher, wrote the "Goin' Home" lyrics.

I knew that in just a couple months I would be returning to my native California, and back to everyone whom I hadn't seen in a couple years. The good times I'd had in two years in Boston, the friends I'd made (whom I would be leaving), and the friends and family I would soon see again, the music, and those beautiful glowing orange clouds reflecting in the river below, all added up to one of those beautiful, bittersweet moments of both sorrow and longing.


Goin' home, goin' home, I'm a goin' home;
Quiet-like, some still day, I'm jes' goin' home.

It's not far, jes' close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
Goin' to fear no more.

Mother's there 'spectin' me,
Father's waitin' too;
Lots o' folks gather'd there,
All the friends I knew,
All the friends I knew.
Home, I'm goin' home!