Fifth row, dead-center, and the cheerfully confident 70-piece National Orchestra of Porto, all for 20 euros. They played Stokowski’s Fantasia and Fugue, and his arrangement of Bach’s Prelude No. 24 from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Also on the program were Schoenberg’s orchestration of Bach’s “St. Anne” organ work, and his arrangement of Brahms’ Piano Quartet Op. 25.
What a building! White concrete, no lobby, all stairways leading to the 1,300-seat Grand Auditorium, whose wood patterns are exaggeratedly embossed in gold. Corrugated glass windows (curtained on this early evening) make the city part of the performance. The architect was Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch author, urbanist and filmmaker who also designed the Dutch Embassy in Berlin and the Seattle Central Library.
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| Pre-concert lecture by Porto-based composer Daniel Moreira (in Portuguese). |
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| The Casa da Musica: an architectural funhouse. |
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| The 15-year-old hall is in the working-class neighborhood around the Rotunda da Boavista. |
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| Lighted staircases remind me of the last 20 minutes of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." |
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