Finlandia

Went to see the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra perform Jean Sibelius' Finlandia and some other chosen pieces today. Very lovely, even though my leather jacket clad persona tends to receive some suspicious looks from all the elderly frequenting those social events.

Two things.

After Finlandia they played a Violin Concerto by Sibelius, and for it, a Bulgarian violinist, Bella Hristova, joined the kru. She was really quite incredible, and after the show, during the booming applause, she received a huge bouquet of flowers. Yay for that. The Finnish conductor, Jari Hämäläinen, however, instead of flowers got a large bottle of "something". They really know how to make their Finnish guests happy, it seems. :)

After the violin concerto, there was another interesting thing. A group of 10 or so 75+ years old grannies apparently figured that normal applause weren't enough. Instead they started banging the floor with their feet, making the entire floor shake, and shouted in unison: "UH-UH-UH-UH!" My guess is that they (or everyone around them for the past 50+ years) were rugby fans.