I didn't go to the concert, sorry:(.  But I do want to comment on playing
from memory.  As an aspiring percussionist, I tend to want to memorize
everything, particularly on the mallet instruments.  It's so much easier to
concentrate on the "music" when you've already got all the black dots down;
if you can play it successfully from memory, then you can easily add all
of the (pardon the phrase) emotional stuff.  I usually do it out of my own
sense of necessity (reading from the page on marimba is a difficult skill
that I'm still working on), but I can see why others might do it even when
they could as easily read it from the page.  I realize that my marimba
concerto may not be quite as complex as Bruckner or Mozart, but I think the
same principle might apply.  Maybe his reasons are different, but most of
my music friends memorize for this reason.

Kim Martin
East Carolina University