Saturday Date

We rarely do anything else other than working and being with the puppies.
This Saturday, Buck and Spitz had to baby-sit themselves, while momm and daddy had a date.

We got ourselves dressed in sassy and off we went to party.












It is nice to scrape off the mud sometimes and to do something civilized.





Destination Redlands. We had a nice, formal and costly dinner and we attended the Redlands Symphony Beethoven night performance.
Beethoven Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 7.
This was our first time to see this orchestra.
Our piano tuner told us how good they are and we really should go to see them.
They are performing in the Memorial Chapel on the University of Redlands Campus.
The chapel is very beautiful, but its' acoustics is not really made for orchestra sounds.
Knowing this, the music director reduced the size of the orchestra for this concert, so the sounds would be more accurate and not sounding muddy in the chapel.
The orchestra had thus only 40 people including the conductor. They did sound very good indeed, and they did give their variations to both the concerto and the symphony.


The solo violinist for the Beethoven Violin Concerto was Pavel Farkas.


Farkas was born in Chechoslovakia. He holds the position of Artist Professor of Violin and Orchestra Studies at the University of Redlands. He currently serves as Concertmaster of the California Philharmonic Orchestra.


The cadenzas he performed in the concerto were unusual and we could tell that he had too much fun with that violin.

The music director and conductor is Jon Robertson, bellow.


The Maestro is now in his twenty-sixth season as music director and conductor of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra.
Dr Robertson is currently Dean of Lynn Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton, Florida, where he resides. He also serves as Chair of the Music Department and Professor of and Conducting Director of Orchestras at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Our seats were at the front balcony, where the sounds were better than on the orchestra level.
It was a lot warmer up there, which felt nice to me and extremely hot for Mark.
The chairs on the balcony are not padded. The orchestra level has padded chairs and a lot colder climate. Mark complained about his backside hurting on account of the hard wooden seats. You can have me sit on a bed of nails and I will be happy as long as people dressed in black playing Beethoven on a stage, especially when the 7th is my first favorit of Ludwig's nine.

It was a late night for us, that we are not used to. Getting home after 11:00 pm is a bit much, but it was worth it. We had a great time and it was a fun date. We will do it again soon.