Celestial Music and Sadness

This is a view of the ceiling at the Bass Symphony Hall in Fort Worth.  L and I have season tickets for 8 concerts a year and we were looking forward to the evening and especially the Brahms 3rd Symphony.  We were surprised, though, that a last minute change to the program had the pianist Vadym Kholodenko not playing the Prokofieff Piano Concerto, but instead we were to hear the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto - a favorite of mine.

Unfortunately, my pleasure at the change was abruptly shattered on hearing that the reason for the non-appearance of Mr Kholodenko was that both his young daughters aged 5 and 1 had been murdered at their home on Thursday!  This was a huge shock.  The conductor at Fort Worth dealt with this in a most sensitive fashion, omitting the usual national anthem, but playing Elgar's Nimrod variation and asking for no applause but time for reflection following the piece.  I don't think I have ever been to a concert where something so tragic has impacted proceedings and it is certainly a sad blip today.