The buzz this whole week has been about the emotional homecoming the symphony musicians received at the inaugural concerts of the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra. There have been numerous articles and reviews in the newspaper, radio and television, and I have provided links for you to re-read them  here:

HawaiiNewsNow: Hawaii Symphony Orchestra prepares for inaugural concert. This link has extensive comments by Jonathan Parrish (horn) about the return of many former Honolulu Symphony members from the mainland, as well as video.

Howard Dicus’ blog: Hawaii Symphony launches this week. He also wrote a post on the inaugural concert: Hawaii Symphony in business. He writes, “What a moment of relief, triumph and joy it was. What mana filled the hall!”

KHON “Hawaii Symphony Orchestra debuts to boisterous Beethoven.”

Star-Advertiser: “Standing ovation greets orchestra.”  (Unfortunately, this article is only a partial view of the entire column and can only be read by Star-Advertiser subscribers, but the gist of it is that the audience “stood and applauded, cheered, whooped and ‘Bravo’-ed well into overtime, until the musicians were finally led offstage…Like rain after a long drought, it was exhilarating to hear the orchestra again.” I especially liked this part of Ruth Bingham’s review: “Nothing approaches the sound of a live orchestra.”)

Pacific Business News: “Magic returns as Hawaii Symphony Orchestra takes stage.”

It was even mentioned on the public radio program, Performance Today, as Fred Child wrote on their FaceBook page: We reported the sad news of the bankruptcy and liquidation of the Honolulu Symphony in 2009 and 2010. *Very* pleased to report that the newly formed Hawaii Symphony Orchestra gave their first concert on Sunday. JoAnn Falletta is serving as Artistic Advisor, she has terrific conductors and soloists lined up for this spring. 2nd concert is tonight. Congratulations to ALL involved, and 3 cheers to the musicians! –Fred 

Oboeist Brian Greene (who has played plenty of times at LCH), said on his FaceBook page: We will never forget the love we all felt in the hall yesterday!

We went to last night’s concert since Carl was out of town last weekend, and no surprise, we saw a number of LCH parishioners there. I was upset, though, that a parent with two young children sat behind us, and we had to put up with a lot of audible talking and whining by the kids all during the first half of the concert, distracting us from hearing the beautiful music. Yes, I think it’s great that kids hear classical music — I was dragged to plenty of concerts by my parents. BUT — I didn’t make noise during the concert! Parents of toddlers need to get babysitters! (Sorry, that was my rant for the day!)