I went to the Blossom Cleveland Orchestra concert last night with my dad. It wasn’t actually the Cleveland Orchestra, but rather the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. It was a pleasant night, except for the exit.
Coming in and parking was a bit weird. My dad had a parking pass, so we came in on that rightmost lane labelled for parking passes, but the employees made us go into the middle lane. The right line was almost empty, but the other two were packed for a long way, so we had to pass this line only to have to merge in in front of these people who had presumably waited a while to get to that point. They had us go to the first lot from there where people without passes were sent to the second. I feel like they should label the lanes for who’s supposed to go in which.
The lawn was much more packed than when I went earlier this year. Looked pretty full all the way to the stage left side. We upgraded our lawn seats to pavilion seats and got put in the middle of the second row of the stage-left middle section. Once people came in, the first several rows and the one side of it were full but the rest was empty. Overall, the pavilion still seemed to have plenty of people though.
We got in early and had to wait a while. We sat, read the program, talked a little, and watched people. We were the only people in our section at first, but it filled in more over time, starting with the seats in front of and next to us.
The orchestra played three works. They opened with La Follia Variations by Geminiani. I had never heard it before, but it was good. It was neat how the small group included percussion, sometimes with one violinist putting down their violin and playing a percussion instrument, sometimes the string players stomping while playing.
The second work was Sonata Da Chiesa for String Orchestra by Hailstork. It was alright, but not especially interesting.
The third work and main attraction was The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. I had seen the full Orchestra play it at Severance once, and really liked it. Fancy car commercials have done a disservice to it, but the full pieces are very powerful. Hearing a chamber of 13 people play it sounded much thinner than a full orchestra and made it a bit less powerful, but really emphasized the soloing. The solo violinist was very good and poured energy into it. By the end he was pouring sweat. Overall, it was quite good and I could feel the tingle that great music can bring sometimes.
Leaving, there were lots of people. There was decent spacing while walking, but it still felt like a mash of people. My dad thought we parked in Lot B, since our tag said LTB, so we went to that lot and walked up and down a few rows. But I had remembered coming from the left lot, Lot E, so eventually we went over there. The car was farther in than we though, so he had to use his remote to have it tell us where it was.
We could see that cars weren’t moving in the lanes as we walked. When we got in the car, we were able to pull out partly in the lane because the next car had left some space, but then we just stopped, and waited, and waited. A car across the lane backed up out of its parking spot so it was situated sort of next to us but a bit forward. And it sat with us in this big mess of cars as we waited. After some time, we started seeing some movement ahead, but then it’d stop again. Eventually, finally, it got going slowly, and we worked our way out to the inner roads, followed the slow herd of cars forward, and made it to the valley exit. It was much busier than usual, but kept moving. I think it took us over 45 minutes to get home on what would normally be maybe a 15 minute drive.