Gustav!

No not the hurricane, Gustav Mahler of course! We spent the end of Brian's summer off in Fort Worth so Brian could play with FW Symphony Orchestra in their big Mahler Festival. Every year before their regular season starts they play a weekend long festival focused on a composer and they are spending three years of these festival weekends playing all of Mahler's symphonies. This was the second year and they played Mahler Symphonies number 6, 7, and 2. This is an enormous task, man power wise, and work wise. Brian got to be a part of it because Symphonies 6 and 2 require extra horn power and he got on their sub list since he was runner up at their audition this year!

It really meant a lot to me to have my husband playing with my hometown orchestra in their beautiful Bass Hall, of which Fort Worthians are so proud.

My horn teacher in high school still plays in the FWSO and I remember going to the Beethoven and Brahms festivals when I was in high school. What an education to hear all the Beethoven or Brahms symphonies in 1 weekend!

It was also neat that mom gets the Fort Worth Star Telegram and my Grandma gets the Dallas Morning News so I got to read all the hype about the upcoming festival and then read all the reviews after the concerts and decide whether I agreed or not.

On Thursday night, the first night of the festival, they had a professor do a multimedia presentation on Mahler and a mezzo soprano sing Mahler songs. It was really interesting to learn about Mahler's wife Alma and the femme fatale she was! On Friday night pretty much all of my family and extended family in the area and Brian's parents came to the concert! How exciting for me! I usually go to his concerts by myself but to have 11 people in my row all there to support him felt so special. Afterwards my Aunt said, "Wow Madelyn what does it feel like to be married to someone with a job like that?!" I said, "It feels a lot like being married to an Olympic medal winner I would think. I think it's the greatest thing ever!"

Being horn players, we naturally love Mahler, but I really think the way he wrote for orchestra is just incredible. No one else can use an orchestra to its full capacity like he can and evoke so many emotions! Amazing!