Mahler's 2nd, Resurrection - Orchestre Montreal, Yannick Nezet-Seguin

It was beautiful. My crush conducted marvelously ;-) I set off through town, 30 minutes before the show (friend got stuck in traffic), only to find myself stuck in even more traffic. I finally managed to find a spot on Rene Levesque and ran up the street in the rain, in heels, umbrella being blown inside out, dodging puddles and feeling the damp chill on my legs. Worked through the maze of construction to get to the ticket counter and waited my turn. Mezzanine, G, but centre.

Ran upstairs, sat, waited. Speech about 30th anniversary of OM, short video, speech from YNS, what a sweetie. Then, MUSIC!

You know that you can expect good noise when there are six percussionists, two sets of kettle drums, that HUGE drum, and three other sets of clangy things, eight bass (basses?), two harps, obviously the rest of the instruments, and a choir behind it all.

Close my eyes, it starts, beautiful noise, then a part with strings where I started crying because it was so lovely. Dry my tears, flowing along with the big music, the quiet areas, the gentle, soft plucking, tinging, light, then heavy and dramatic.

The horns kept leaving then coming back, at some point I realised that they were playing in the wings. Three quarters through, three of the percussionists left, and the guy leading the way was trying to push open the wrong door without success before being redirected by the guy behind him.

The man sitting next to me had his elbow well into my side and possessed a muscle tic and kept jabbing me in the ribs. This grew worse once he fell asleep.

The mezzo soprano was rich and I could understand what she was singing, the soprano, as with most sopranos, I can rarely make out every word, but I actually made out even fewer, sounded nice though. She was on the "stick side" of Yannick and I swear he was close to poking her eye out a few times. Must have been farther away though because she didn't flinch.

The percussion was incredible, in a few places it came out like shimmering waves over the rest of the music and I was delighted at the joy I felt. The end was big and dramatic and clashy banging strings sawing, my crush in a frenzy of arms.

Back out into the cold and rain and home. Overjoyed that I went.