Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman

The Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan

Another benefit to attending the University of Michigan is student tickets to University Musical Society (UMS) performances.  Tonight I saw Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman play piano duos, including a performance of a piece by one of my favorite composers, Sergei Rachmaninoff.  The piece is called Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, and it was pretty awesome (in the classic sense of the word, not the Keanu Reeves interpretation).  Bass lines thundered, the treble flitted from octave to octave, and as the piano professor says in the movie “Shine”, it was full of “big fat chords”.

It was the first time I’d been to the Hill Auditorium.  I spent the last week volunteering at the Ann Arbor public library doing inventory on their UMS programs at the Hill Auditorium from 1890 through 1950, where I read about 8 performances by Rachmaninoff in the very building I was in this evening.  It was humbling to know that I was in the same place that Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Horowitz, Caruso, and Marian Anderson all performed.  I like to remind myself of the history of a place when I go.

So I’ve decided that UMS student tickets are like the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I need to check into tickets for Yo Yo Ma in March …

University Musical Society

~ by Jess on November 9, 2008.