My National Symphony Orchestra subscription series is for Fridays at 8:00pm (seven concerts per season). At 6:35pm tonight I checked my ticket to see if it was maybe an 8:30 concert. NO! 7:00pm. Aarrgh. I arrived in good time for the 8:00pm curtain call missing the first half.

Normally the NSO does not have a full house, but this was a special evening. I think they invited all of their biggest donors, the box tier was full and all the men were in tuxedos. I heard Ravel's Concerto in D major for the Left Hand with Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the piano. I'd never heard this before--worth hearing again. Excerpts from Berloiz, La Damnation de Faust--also good. I thought I had missed Renee Fleming's performance, but she sang again after intermission. Lucky for me. Interestingly the orchestra left the stage and she sang two songs for piano and soprano, accompanied by Thibaudet. I've never seen the NSO do that. (Still the audience couldn't create that absolute silence that you get in smaller recital halls, where your rustling and coughing will rouse daggers from all sides.) She finished with a reduced orchestra. And sang two arias from Massenet's "Manon" and a third for an encore. Her second was the best, receiving rousing applause before she finished...twice. Obviously, few people knew the piece, or they chose to applaud for what they liked, which was her excellent coloratura. The rest of my series is at 8:00pm, I checked, so I will be on time.

Photography is prohibited in the concert hall or you would be seeing her with Leonard Slatkin taking their final bows framed by the two sets of shoulders in front and below me, the angle and framing were perfect from tier one, left side.