The 1st orchestral concert I've been to in over a year

Sarah Chang entered the stage to much applause, sporting a pink conservative 1-piece, and took up her spot amidst the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. She played Shostakovich's opus number 77, which has four parts. The first part was a rather melancholy, slow piece that I wasn't particularly fond of, despite having been starved for live orchestral music since last summer. However, the second one livened up considerably. It filled my head with visions of large goofy creatures; multitudes of them hopping around. The third part started out like a military marching song but soon dropped to a slower pace, not unlike the first. I found it rather inconsistent, which ruined whatever effect it was meant to have. Fortunately, the fourth part was much more to my liking. It conjured up images of friends being gathered together from disparate areas and assembled into a force that kept advancing on an incumbent enemy that slowly gave way, one skirmish at a time, in the face of an inevitable restoration of a once vanquished power to its former glory.