Prague: The city of holy buckets!

 Well, Prague was truly the city of holy buckets! To explain this statement, at the beginning of trip, there was a moment where instead of exclaiming "holy cow" I said "holy buckets" instead for some reason. Well the statement stuck, so now "holy buckets" is used for really awesome situations. Prague was one awesome situation for sure! On Wednesday night, we went to the Prague Symphony in Smetana Hall. The Zemlinski Sinfionetta that they started with was a piece that I didn't know much about, but ended up loving. It was weirdly off-balance feeling with interesting orchestration, and absolutely wonderful. The next piece was the Martinu Oboe Concerto. The oboe soloist was a rock star! She walked out in a flowy red dress/jumpsuit and was very dramatic with her playing, she shredded on the oboe! The last group of pieces was some of Dvorak's symphonic poems: Water Goblin, Noon Witch, and Wild Dove. It was fun to listen to the pieces after knowingly the story behind each one and listening for how the story was illustrated through the orchestration of sounds. The orchestra played the pieces spectacularly, especially the bass clarinet solos, go bass clarinet!!! The conductor Jac van Steen was so much fun to watch. He was expressive, flowery, and had some great conducting moves such as the claws and the axe-chop. Carlos Kleiber (my favorite conductor ever!) was definitely being channeled that night. 

The next day we went up to the Prague Castle to the Lobkowitz Palace to visit the museum exhibit and see chamber music in the parlor. The major attractions of the exhibit were the original manuscripts of Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 6th symphonies and Mozart's reorchestration of Handel's Messiah. Yeah....I was a glass pane away from Beethoven and Mozart's own handwriting!! The chamber music ended up being piano and viola solos and duets. It was a nice change to hear some actual piano music that included Beethoven sonatas and a Chopin waltz. Yes, I am a piano player and was completely enthralled with the quiet simplicity of the concert. Oh and the viola player was amazing, talk about a gorgeous tone he produced! After exploring the Lobkowitz home, we venture off to find the Dvorak museum and a restaurant called U Flecku for dinner. We found the Dvorak museum downtown and had fun listening to remixes of the New World theme with a reggae beat and a hip-hop/in-da-club version of a polka. I have also decided me and Dvorsk would have been friends. He liked quiet walks in the country, didn't like large crowded cities, and enjoyed the simple things in life. The restaurant we would be eating at was highly recommended by my voice teacher, so I was extremely excited to see why it was so amazing. First off, it is the oldest brewery in Prague and secondly, it has amazing food and home brews! All our meals were delicious, especially the goulash and dumpling that I had. Also having an accordion player serenading the restaurant was a great experience! Later that night we also went on a jazz cruise on the Vltava with an interesting funky/soul group. It was different from what we were expecting, but still fun! 

I was definitely sad to leave Prague the next day. It was such a gorgeous city, and we only scratched the surface of everything to discover. But alas, our travels continue. The next blog posts will be about the adventures in our new city of Salzburg. Stay tuned!!!