After the intermission, the piece is played in full. And then there is a Q&A section at the end. I learned a lot about the piece such as the little theme from the Hallelujah Chorus in the last movement, a piece of the Scherzo (3rd movement) that appears in the last in imitation of a then recent Beethoven invention, how Mendelssohn pioneered conducting an orchestra, and also started the practice of performing old music (e.g. Bach was not generally performed at the time). Two of the musicians used MacBookPros with a two-button foot pedal to turn pages as their source of music and one explained how it allowed him to play from the score instead of just seeing his line because rapid page turning was now possible.
The next What Makes it Great is January 23 with Cole Porter's music.
As was true last year, before the concert we went to dinner with
eblaug_rss and RP at Bombay Cafe. 