We have tickets for a chamber music concert series at Konserthuset and the first one was today. Piano, cello, violin and percussion.

Pejacevic’ piano trio was music of the romantic kind, definitely impressive but not to my taste. The kind of music where everything blends together and it’s a mass of notes rather than a melody. I find it difficult to keep my focus on this kind of music, to the point that I begin dreaming while awake. My brain has nothing to hold on to, so it starts making things up.

Shostakovich’ symphony No. 15 arranged for a chamber ensemble. I liked this a lot better, with the dialogue between the cello and the violin. It’s an interesting piece of music, with its quotes from other famous works. It was almost bizarre to suddenly get a burst of the Willam Tell Overture in the middle of the piece. It was also clearly a technically challenging piece, especially for the strings, veering into atonality.

We had front row seats, which I particularly like for small-scale classical music, because it allows me to see the musicians’ craft up close. Which is particularly nice when I find myself zoning out.

One thing I noticed this time was a digital sheet music stand that the violinist used, with a foot pedal for turning pages. I wish I could have gotten a closer look – sometimes it seemed to only redraw the bottom of the page, and I wonder what that was about.

The cellist and the percussion section used traditional sheet music. The pianist did so as well, with the help of a page turner. That seems like it might be a challenging task – it’s not just about reading the music but also keeping track of dal segno “navigations”, being unobtrusive while waiting… and not getting distracted.