WOW...

... is all I can say. I just saw the finest performance of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite that I have ever seen. The first two pieces performed were modern Shizer, but Firebird was absolutely fantastic. Especially cool were the extra 3 trumpets that came out 2 minutes before the piece ended just to create an extra loud, brassy Finale. The crowd went crazy as soon as they finished playing, and wouldn't stop clapping. The maestro left and came back 3 times, and eventually he just told the concertmaster to lead everyone offstage (there's probably some wacky union rule that they have to be offstage by a certain time). Then after the orchestra left, everybody was still clapping so much that the maestro came back out again by himself for even more bows. Just for reference, I never saw this happen while I lived in San Francisco.

I should have given more details about the concert I saw last night. As I said, it was in a separate auditorium that was designed for Chamber Music (small ensemble) concerts. I bought the premium ticket (around 40 Euro), which got me in the 6th row, absolute center. Awesome seats. The hall is a small, intimate setting, with seats going very close to the stage. The stage would probably hold about 20 musicians at the most.

Rotary trumpets are apparently the norm in Germany. Ludwig Guttler's piccolo trumpet was a 4-valve rotary piccolo, and all 6 trumpets at the Firebird performance were using rotary-valve trumpets. I suppose if I ever moved here I'd have to re-outfit my entire collection. I've never actually played on a rotary trumpet before, so I don't really know what the big deal is. Kind of interesting that they aren't really that popular in the US. I suppose it could be a totally meaningless fad.

Today was the first day of the SAF conference (the actual reason why I'm in Berlin). There was a session for new members, so I learned a lot about SAF in general, how the body works, what all the different parts of it are, and who's who. I also got to meet several HP people that I'd heard of but hadn't met before.