KC Symphony - Simone Dinnerstein

It's been so gray and dreary today. Wet enough to feel like spring, but down right cold for May. After being out all day, I came home and was pleased to stay nice, warm, and dry in my apartment for a little while. I kind of wanted to stay here the rest of the night, but we had tickets to the symphony. We haven't been in many weeks and tonight's guest soloist was Simone Dinnerstein, and I've been looking forward to her performance all season long. So even though I kind of wanted to stay in, I went out.

The four pieces on the docket tonight were Schubert, Mahler, Mozart, and Strauss - all Viennese, each so distinct. Dinnerstein played the Mozart piece - Piano Concerto No. 21. Before she came on stage, wearing a watery, fluttering blue and purple iridescent gown, I had been reading in the program that this concerto, when it was written and performed in 1785 "held an expressive undercurrent that would not continue to please the Viennese public" and that they were "bewildered by this music and its incipient Romanticism."

Romanticism. They say that like it's a bad thing, but it was precisely these things that I loved about this piece - and that I have always loved about the second movement of this piece, a movement I know so well and always associate with spring. Every time I hear the music of the second movement, I think of rainy spring. Which might explain why the first and third movements also fit so well with the weather today, too. The entire piece is rich with emotion and felt so right on a night like this.

And as for Ms. Dinnerstein - her performance was so expressive and varied, both clear and complex, indeed as iridescent as she was.