Eating out

On Saturday evening, TonyG blipped about a concert he had attended, which prompted me to think "I'm sorry I missed that, and I fancy a nice evening out".  Some research found a concert with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra and Chloe Hanslip at Norwich Theatre Royal on Sunday evening.

Sadly (because it's an indication of how few people attend these concerts) there were loads of tickets available, so we booked a pair of gangway seats (both of us like to be able to stretch out into the gangway - particularly important for me at the moment).

I then thought about eating out, and found that The Assembly House does a nice pre-show dinner, and again, there was plenty of room available.

Good evening out sorted whilst still in bed on Sunday morning!

It was a great concert - Chloe was technically brilliant.  I didn't much like the Prokofiev Violin Concerto, but the Swan Lake Suite and the Shostakovich Symphony were great.  But the venue has considerable disadvantages - the stage was barely big enough for the orchestra - on two occasions the rather flamboyant conductor sent the music of front row desks shuttering to the floor.  I've added an extra of Chloe taking a bow at the end of the concerto, for which I got told off by a rather officious lady - "you aren't allowed to take photos".  What - not even when there's no music being played?  And I never use flash.  It meant that I only took the one photo, and was inhibited about taking out my camera later, to try to show how crowded the stage was.

Norwich doesn't have a proper concert hall.  St Andrew's Hall is a converted church, which has a lovely ambience, but awful sound proofing, so concerts are disturbed by traffic noise and sirens, and there are restrictions on the level of noise from the concert for the convenience of the people living around the Hall.  And as demonstrated, the stage at Theatre Royal isn't really big enough.

Watching this, and listening to the suite from Swan Lake stimulated me to fancy seeing the ballet, and there is a performance at the Theatre Royal next year.  It's great that they bring such things to Norwich, but I think I'd rather go down to London and see it in a more spacious environment.  So that's my current research.