The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Essay

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is a symphony orchestra that has found themselves a place amongst the small, select group of top world orchestras. They have played nearly one thousand musical pieces over their years of existence, and are set apart from other orchestras because they have only had six chief conductors. The current chief conductor is Mariss Jansons who has been in position since 2004. This orchestra is made up of 24 members, playing 13 different instruments. These instruments include violins (first and second), violas, cellos, basses, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, trombones, tuba, horns, and timpani. On January 11, 2011, the Concertgebouw Orchestra had a guest performer by the name of Joshua Bell who is currently known as the best violinist in the world. Typically during an orchestra performance, people tend to fall asleep because the music is either so soothing, or so boring. Of the different orchestra’s I have seen, I do have to admit that, besides Joshua Bell’s solo, this was the most boring orchestra. Their music was beautiful, intricate and simply amazing. However, the pieces that they played were not very exciting in someone’s eyes who does not know music. In my head, almost the entire hour sounded the same and it was like back round music I put on at night to put me to sleep. I do not think it was boring at all, I think it was extremely soothing and relaxing to listen to. I enjoyed listening to them and not being startled every 30 seconds by the drums pounding in or the horns suddenly sounding out of no where. In this sense, I very much enjoyed listening to this orchestra in a different way then I enjoyed the other musical performances we went to see. When Joshua Bell came out to do his solo, it was actually very funny because he completely changed the mood of the night by playing “Yankee Doodle” on his violin. The whole mood