Memorial Hall

Friday
After two days of almost constant rain, leading to flooding in various places, today was dry and the sun shone, though the temperature was less than half what it was yesterday - not getting above freezing! After my fairly busy day yesterday, we had a quiet morning at home, making some preliminary plans for another trip - in April - down to New Orleans and some of the plantation houses of Louisiana. Around lunchtime we both went swimming, and I completed a new record distance - 72 lengths!! I wasn’t planning on swimming that long, but Roger is swimming further these days, and I wasn’t about to let him swim longer than me! So as long as he kept swimming, so did I! I still swim faster than he does ( he did a mere 60!), whereas he does better than me on the elliptical machine! We had an early dinner, as this evening we were at another Symphony Concert at Music Hall, and we wanted to go down early for the talk about the music ahead of time. I have blipped Music Hall before, so tonight I took a photo of Memorial Hall which is next door. It was built in 1908 to commemorate members of all branches of the armed forces, as well as the pioneers who had established the United States. It recently underwent an $11 million renovation, completed in December 2016. Tonight’s program just featured one work - Bruckner Symphony No 8, which lasted for about 55 minutes, and was performed without intermission. It was the last Symphony Bruckner completed. Bruckner had a mania for editing his works once they were completed, hence there are different versions of this Symphony, and depending on the performance and the version, it can last up to almost 80 minutes! I was surprised there wasn’t a bigger crowd - Mahler usually pulls in a big crowd - I expected Bruckner to do the same, but the audience number seemed rather disappointing.