In Concert
Last Friday evening I attended a concert at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, where I live, and as I occasionally am wont to do. It was an old favorite, a Romantic paen, the ultimate Classical performance piece: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. The guest conductor was a young Spaniard, Pablo Heras-Casado, and the performer was an Englishman, multi-award winner, named Stephen Hough. It was a perfect performance, and as always, powerful experience. But I am not a music critic, per se, other than at my own personal level. But I come from a musical family, have grown up with and lived with music all of my life, been a musician of sorts myself, and music remains my first love. As an author, I am best gifted, for better or worse, at composing with words. Words are a wonderful tool and thing, however often disparaged by the linguistically challenged (George W. Bush and Sarah Palin come to mind),and the English language is the compendium of all languages. But the spoken language still cannot st