It's a shame that this thread is so silent. I'll come back with more serious posts once my exams are finished... For now, I give you this video. Look at the dude in the back (you'll know who I mean). This whole piece, and all I can look at is his face (he just does not stop). I imagine if my friend and I were there (either as spectators or playing the instrument,) we'd ruin the show with hysterical laughter. I wonder if he's always like that during concerts- and how his colleagues manage to keep a straight face while they have a clown sitting next to them. Love it.
Maybe the real question is why they are always so serious?
I have sometimes seen persistently odd expressions like that on soloists. It is indeed amusing to watch and I wonder what is going through their mind as they play. I suspect the serious expressions are a side effect of the focus needed to play one's own part while following the conductor and listening to the other musicians. Have you ever played in an orchestra? Even accompanying a soloist can require quite a bit of focus, especially if the part is challenging and the soloist takes lots of liberties. More practice increases the comfort level, and a group that plays often together, perhaps lighter or very familiar music, may "loosen up" a bit more when they play. Think of an established jazz band. Members of a sports team will often have very serious expressions if the game is close or very important to win.
Thinking about more classical music like the first video; I wonder what 'draws' people towards it and what makes people dislike (or even repulsed by) it. I personally don't like the violin piece that much (I am used to listening to the Vivaldi 'Summer' piano cover. It sounds less 'classical' to me.)
What makes people like or dislike any music, or any other art genre or specific work? It all comes down to personal taste. Of course it is hard to like what you haven't been exposed to, so sampling different things can broaden your horizons. No genre is monolithic, though, either. I say I like classical music in general, but there is plenty that I don't like. I have preferred styles and composers within the classical genre, and even then I won't like everything a given composer wrote, and sometimes I find something enjoyable by a composer I generally dislike. I am not sure my tastes qualify as eclectic, but I do enjoy music from many different genres/styles. I have posted some of this in the various music related threads here. I like music that is "interesting", meaning it has a backstory, or has been arranged/interpreted in different ways, or merges different styles and elements to good effect, or has multiple layers of meaning.
One piece I have been listening to recently is this. First is the Liz Story piano version, listed as "Pavane" on one of the Winter Solstice albums.
I play an arrangement of this myself, based in part on this version, though a bit faster and with more emphasis on the repeated rhythm in the left hand.
This Pavane is actually from a larger work by Thoinot Arbeau called
Orchesographie, a study of late 16th century French Renaissance social dance. That version sounds like this. The left hand piano rhythm of the above mirrors the original tambour part.
But this piece in fact has lyrics, apparently by the composer of the music - I can find no other reference. I heard it this way first, when I was only 11 or 12, sung a capella by the King's Singers. It is a song of courtly love called "Belle qui tient ma vie"; in English: "Beauty who holds my life (captive in your eyes)". Arbeau was a Catholic priest, but that didn't stop him and others in religious life at the time from writing romantic and sometimes outright bawdy material.