An offbeat St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. I celebrated by wearing my family tartan tie with the blue and green plaid and the white and orange lines under a dark green cable knit cotton sweater under a grey pin-striped suit. Then, rather than brave the loud, crowded, smoke-filled Irish pubs, a group of us made plans to go to a concert at the Kennedy Center.

It was an okay concert. It was the National Symphony Orchestra with their music director Leonard Slatkin conducting. I think they sounded the best I've ever heard them this season when Slatkin has been on the podium. Lest you get excited and jealous about my musical experience last night, remember that the NSO always sounds better when they have someone else conducting. They played a short, boring piece from a Barber ballet suite called "Medea's Dance of Vengeance," Op. 23a, at the begining, and a workman-like Schumann's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, "Rhenish," Op. 97, at the end. In between was the highlight of the evening, Dvorak's seldom heard Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33, with soloist Garrick Ohlsson at the piano.

Svet's mother is a renowned concert pianist from Russia (she's recorded over 150 CDs), so I kept asking her opinion of the pianist and the piano concerto. She was unmovably diplomatic in all her responses, saying that Ohlsson is a very good pianist (but I couldn't pin her down as to an opinion of this performance) and her opinion of the concerto performance was directed at the long-dead composer, saying that it is "not musical." Svet, also a pianist but interestingly enough someone who used to sell Steinway pianos, complained all evening that the piano's voicing and tuning were off. They are always so polite. Svet was looking dapper in a camel cashmere blazer and grey flannel trousers and his mother, who must have brought dozens of suitcases on this trip, was very elegant in a mid-calf length suit of lavender raw silk with same tone embroidery and pearls on the top and an intriguing outer winter wrap in black wool with a bright teal meandering snake design on one side.

And thus we celebrated Saint Patrick's Day.