A string quartet made up of Seattle Symphony musicians performed the third, fourth and fifth movements of Peter Schickele's American Dreams. Stephen Bryant, the first violinist of the quartet and one of the most engaged players in the symphony, introduced the piece and talked about each movement, and afterwards he took most of the questions about it.
I wasn't thrilled with the choice of repertoire, but I didn't get too depressed about it because the choice certainly didn't come from any ill will towards the classical masters. Throughout the course of the Q&A Stephen Bryant even made an explicit comment that "it's not Mozart or Beethoven," but that it was a piece they have fun playing and wanted to share with us. I was actually quite comforted by Bryant and the way he spoke and came across. He's very evidently a traditional classical player who views things much like I do, and this was evident through several of the comments he made during the Q&A.
It was a fairly short event and we were out of there about an hour after we walked through the doors. There isn't too much else to say about it, I just didn't want to leave it out of the blog.
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