Another great Repartee night at the Symphony. We’d had minor members of the orchestra, star members of the orchestra, but never the composer of the piece as our guest speaker – but that was the case tonight, when Michael Gandolfi joined us for a pre-concert talk, during which time he described the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, a garden in Scotland that serves as the inspiration for and the title of the piece the BSO would play tonight. The Globe had a nice piece on Gandolfi today.

The work was surprisingly accessible for a piece of modern music, at least to my ears. It was very engaging and interesting, and not without some traditionally pleasing melodies and chords. Gandolfi was sitting not too far from us, and it was funny to see him rush out the door during the applause for his piece so he could emerge from the stage door and take bow or two.

Richard Goode played a Bartok piano concerto as the middle piece of the evening, and then the orchestra finished with the majestic “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which I suppose is a pretty well-worn piece at this point, but I always love hearing it. I always remember dad’s lp of the piece with that picture frame that looked like a skull…sort of. There were some creepy parts of the piece, so the association stuck. It has great brass parts – I can almost picture a high school marching band arrangement, which was described to me by a colleague at work. That and the “A-Team” theme song, those were his favorites. Good taste.