Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra Chamber Players

While we were waiting around for our 12:30 guided tour of the skybridge, we came across an advertisement for an evening chamber concert- for only 10MR (that's less than four dollars Canadian!). Since there was a semi-formal dress code, we spent the afternoon shopping for pants for Dan, and shoes for Angela (at one of the MANY malls in KL). There was no photography allowed in the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, but I did take a quick picture of Dan looking snappy in the foyer, and of the huge chandelier hanging above the first two floors of the main entrance to one of the Petronas towers.
The concert was composed of three shorter performances. The first one was a violin and cello duo performing a piece by Zoltan Kodaly. Dan nodded off during this one, but I enjoyed it. The second piece was the shortest, but I think it was my favorite. It certainly woke everyone up. It was called "Tarantella" composed by Anderson Koppel. Again, there were only two performers on stage, but this time the duo was a violinist and a small Asian woman playing a huge marimba. She played with four mallets in her hands, and the music captured the steps of a spider perfectly. The piece was composed in 1996, and was apparently inspired by "a traveling story Koppel first heard in the 1950s which painted a vivid picture of the famous dance, said to have been named after the frantic leaping and gyrating of a person bit by a tarantula" (concert programme).
The final performance was Dan's favorite, and it featured an ensemble of clarinets, French horns, oboes and bassoons. Together they played Mozart's Serinade No.11 in E flat (K.375). All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend an evening, and we also got a chance to see the Petronas towers all lit up at the end of the night.