Beethoven as a migraine cure

Have been a bit blog-idle this week, but am hoping to make amends over the weekend. A combination of a migraine, hot weather and too much work knocked me for six, but you can imagine my delight at discovering that Migraleve mixed with loud Beethoven seems to cure even the worst headache.

Last night saw my Cadogan Hall debut - in the audience, I hasten to add - for an Oxford Philomusica and London Symphony Chorus gig. The opening piece, 'The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe' by the either improbably or utterly appropriately named Nimrod Borenstein was rather beautiful. I'm not a fan of modern classical music (having once attended a prom where the main piece sounding like rain coming through a leaky roof), but I liked this - particularly the oboe solos and the use of pizzicato.

The main piece was Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the Choral symphony. As a lapsed horn player, I loved the horn parts. It was a 5-man section, and they had their work cut out for them. Being right at the front in the cheap seats meant that although we probably had an accoustically warped experience overall, we were all but sitting in the horn section, with all the old South Ulster Youth Orchestra (dear god, they didn't have Myspace in my day)memories that evoked.

My concert friend was unburdened by misty-eyed memories of Saturday mornings spent butchering the classical repertoire. His verdict on the Beethoven? "It's odd that we were most moved by the slow movement. The outer movements were dross." Also sprach Zarathustra .....