All these cloakrooms surrounded the central lobby/hall of the concert hall, so there was lots of room to mill around for the 10-15 minutes we waited until the doors to the auditorium opened. We passed time talking with Daniel and Stef – Stef realized that she didn’t have appropriate shoes with her, so she’d been out shopping earlier that day at the really ritzy mall area (same neighborhood as the Concert Hall) and picked up some (very) reasonably priced boots.

Once the inside doors opened we trooped up the stairs to find “Door 16”. The concert hall has 4 levels – the Orchestra/floor, two similarly sized balconies ringing three sides of the main floor, and a fourth balcony with seating that frankly looked more like hockey press boxes than theater seating. We were directed up to the second of the two balconies and, as one usher looked at our assignment in order to direct us upward he commented “oh – those are good seats”. I figured that there probably wasn’t a bad seat in the house and made a comment to that effect.  He probably says that to everyone, I thought.

Well, it turns out they WERE good seats. Really good. Doors 16 through 18 led to the 3 sections at the back of the auditorium, directly facing the stage. Door 17 led to the most central section, which turned out to be the royal seats – unoccupied for the moment. So we sat in the section immediately to the right of the King and his party. The six seats of the front row of our section were occupied by 3 of the 11 Laureates (Weo, another Chem winner, and one of the Physics winners) and their spouses. I assume three more pairs were on the other side, and I’m guessing the other Laureates and families were in corresponding locations in the first balconies just below us. Immediately behind Sharon and Weo, in 3 rows of pairs, were Daniel and Stef, Eileen and Andrew, then Robert and me. I assume the pairs behind the others were also part of each Laureates families. Jeff and Lise were one section over to our right, along with other members of Weo’s party.

The orchestra meandered on to the stage until they were finally all seated, and the concertmaster coordinated the night’s first piece, Music to Tune By, before sitting down to a generally quiet concert hall. Through some unknown piece of stage management the percussionist started beating out a snare drum tattoo and everyone rose and turned to face the back of the hall – meaning everyone was looking up at the empty seats immediately next to us. At that point the King and Queen entered from Door 17, followed by others including the Crown Princess and husband and others who we couldn’t ID. I think their party totaled 16 people – perhaps 20. The orchestra then struck up some kind of anthem. They have both a National Anthem and some kind of “God Save the King” equivalent – not sure which one this was. At the end, the King sits which is the signal to the rest of us that we can do the same.

The vocal soloist and guest conductor now entered. She is going to sing “The Letter Aria” from Eugene Onegin. As it happens, they are married to one another. The conductor’s bio suggests that he’s one of the hottest of the young breed – he might be the Boston Symphony’s new guy…don’t recall. Whatever he is, he’s from the school of expressive body movements and stick shaking that I don’t personally understand. Her aria was frankly unimpressive. I expected an opera soloist to be able to be heard above the orchestra, but her vocal power is frankly not what you’d expect.

That number over, she and conductor retreated and the orchestra did a very quick re-tune. The conductor re-entered with the trumpet soloist who was performing a modern piece. The only reason to learn the name of the piece would be in order to avoid ever hearing it again. I can’t be bothered, so I’ll simply call it Music to Crash Cars To. We are treated to a virtuoso trumpet performance of an otherwise awful piece of music.

At the end, the soloist and conductor beat a retreat, leaving the orchestra onstage. Again, through some national understanding of “how it works” that was mysterious to us, everyone turned to the back of the hall and stood up at once. After a few seconds pause, the royal party, led by K&Q, got up and exited their section. At that point, all the doors opened up and people began to file out – expect those of us using doors 16 and 18. We had to wait about 90 seconds before our doors opened, no doubt to allow time for the royal party to vacate the hallway and go somewhere private. Once our doors opened we exited into the hallway where tables bearing champagne were waiting for us. Sharon and Weo tried to cut around the corner to Door 15 to greet the rest of the party, but were not allowed to do so. Security didn’t want people “leaking” into or out of our area. So we all merrily sipped our champagne and swapped gossip for 20-25 minutes before re-entering and finding our seats again.

I don’t recall what preceded the second entry by the royals – I don’t think it was another drum tattoo. I think it may have simply been that the orchestra stood up as a signal to the rest of us. We finally all took our seats and the conductor came out. He said a few quick words along the lines of “honored to be part of this…music is important…etc.”, and then they launched into Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which was just excellent. Weo was particularly amazed – he’s able to compare with other performances he’s attended and mentioned that the interpretation we’d just heard included things he’d never heard before and it was without question the best rendition he’d ever experienced. High praise indeed.

So on that we all finally exited (with another round of “You first” for the royal party) and retrieved our things before re-embarking on the buses back to the hotel. If we’d been smart we would have skipped the buses and gone to find a restaurant by the concert hall. The choices closer to the hotel – already meager – were essentially non-existent by 10P on Monday night. We tried walking to an Italian restaurant with Daniel and Stef that claimed to be open until midnight, but that turned out to be for drinks only. Meal service had ended by the time we arrived. So our night ended with a late room service dinner and bed.

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