When you expect something to be amazing, and then it is amazing, you're impressed to a moderate degree. When, however, you have no advance expectations, or even moreso when you expect something to be mediocre, then there's a particular kind of "blown away," occasionally involving dizziness and/or elation. This evening, at the Berkeley Symphony, I had the pleasure of being impressed twice in one concert. First by minimalist composer John Adams's Shaker Loops, which I expected to be good, and second by new conductor Joana Carneiro, whom I didn't know much about, and whom I expected to be pretty mediocre. Wow, was I wrong about her. To begin with her hugest accomplishment, I've never seen a Beethoven Symphony played with such electricity. Crisp is too gentle a word for how together the orchestra played. Except for two hiccups, the orchestra was locked in not just with each other, but with Ms. Carneiro, the source of the electricity (and a hundred other emotions). From my seat on the side in the very first row, I had the experience of watching Ms. Carneiro's face as she conducted. Her face, I realized afterward, was the reason that the orchestra was able to play Beethoven's Fifth...
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