Caine Performance Hall Concert Report

Upon first entering the Caine Performance Hall, my tickets were quickly taken and I was ushered into a moderately sized room and asked to find a seat. The walls within the room were covered with elaborate panelling - no doubt to improve the acoustics. There were 4 sections of seats and since I was a little late I took a seat in the back, however, because of the small scale of the performance room, I didn’t feel as if I was far from the stage. When the performers came out, the whole production felt very intimate which helped me to really feel and attempt to understand the complex music. The average age of others attending the concert was between 35-60, there were only a few younger people in attendance. Because of the more mature crowd, everyone …show more content…
Before the quartet began to play, they each came forward and gave the audience some background and a bit of a history lesson about the composer and why they had chosen their piece to end their performance. Their final piece was String Quartet no.6 by Bela Bartok. According to the members of the act, Bartok wrote his composition right before WWII broke out across Europe and his distaste for the Hitler regime and the feeling of fear and sadness are evident in his music written during this time. One of the most fascinating aspects of this particular piece was it’s lack of any cohesive rhythm. It was almost painfully enjoyable to listen to in certain parts because of the unexpected twists the disjunct melody followed. There were mis-plucked chords, slips of bows, and occasionally the violist hit his instrument making a sort of banging noise. The piece was also interesting because of the instrumental timbre elements featured throughout. Where most songs have the violinists as the prominent instruments while the cellists and violists give depth and added sound this song had the violist as the prominent instrumental sound for much of the