We spent primary night at Lincoln Center enjoying the NY Philharmonic. No matter how many times I have the great pleasure of attending a NY Phil concert, I am first always so moved by the beauty and variety of the hand-made string instruments, the glistening brass, the warm woodwinds and the amount of different objects the percussionist has at hand ready to play.

It reminds me of an animation I saw as a child about the history of the orchestra which claimed that violins ultimately derive from bows and arrows. Something like ..”swords into plowshares.”

The NY Philharmonic has tried it’s hand at making a bridge for diplomacy and cultural sharing in the past with it’s historic visit to China, and this week the orchestra will make another historic  trip and perform in North Korea. The concert in North Korea will be on February 26 and be broadcast on PBS. The program is (Brooklyn born) George Gershwin’s, An American in Paris, and Dvorak’s, From the New World, which was written mostly in New York.

We have friends and relatives who love High End sound equipment and tell us how much like a “real orchestra” their system sounds. Their systems are wildly expensive, and sound great. But with my subscription seat which is a teeny fraction of the cost of their systems, I sit up in the third tier of Avery Fisher Hall,  all the way to the front of the house, and I can hear and see everything so gloriously. Even the conductor’s score, and the musicians faces. Just my cup of tea.

The program that night was: Rossini Overture to La Scala Seta( The Silken Ladder), Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 4 (Italian), and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6 the Pathetique, conducted by Lorin Maazal. Buy yourself a ticket and enjoy this great orchestra. The program notes for each concert and about the musicians are fascinating and available online.