The guest soloist, Andreas Haefliger, deftly played Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. In case you were wondering, as I was, there are pieces for the right hand only, and, this one was really on my mind during the concert, a series of books with music that can be played with either hand alone.

I also wondered what Haefliger would be doing with his right hand during the performance. If he didn’t know the piece by heart he could have used it to turn the pages. If he had a page turner, would that person have to use only their left hand?

But he just let the right hand sit idle. Seemed like a waste. He could have used it to text. Isn’t that what everyone does when they have a free hand, especially while driving?

I wonder if next year the festival will include a clarinet concerto for the lower lip.

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique closed the evening. Everything I could hear was good but there were some parts that were so soft that I only knew the orchestra was playing by watching the conductor wave his baton. He could have been faking it, but not during the fourth movement’s hallucinatory March to the Scaffold, which told a story supported by the percussion section that was both symbolic and cymballic.