The Església Parroquial de Sant Pere de Ribes is only a hundred or so years old, but looks much older because of the style in which it is built. It seems oddly large for what would have been a very small village a century ago, but it turns out that the building was a gift to god for the recovery of a wife. Local boy makes good in South America and offers god a bribe to save his wife; a bribe that god obviously accepts – though why god wants a mini cathedral in a village outside Sitges must be put down to the resolute inscrutability of the deity!

The church itself is imposing with a lofty interior with bayed vaulting. The church famously has two towers and there is a lantern in the body of the nave. The stone used in the construction is a rather featureless grey which makes the columns look as though they have been made out of superior breeze blocks and the capitals from which the ribs of the vaulting spread are over large and ornate, looking as though they have been salvaged from another church.

The open bays are disfigured by ornate golden filigree altars in the usual Rags of Popery style, as is the high altar with a towering construction reaching almost to the roof and containing a particularly unedifying statue of Saint Peter clutching his keys and sporting a very spiky halo.

Architectural analysis was not why I was there. As Margaret had offered a second (after I had to pass up on the first) invitation to stay with the additional inducement of culture and food, I was there with alacrity!

So, for the first time in my life I have heard Benjamin Britten sung in Catalan: Sant Nicolau, op. 42 Cantata. Even my Catalan stretches to understanding that this is the cantata Saint Nicholas.

A disturbingly precocious saint who gained the power of speech at an exceptionally early age and whose first words, “God be glorified!” were uttered while he was still in the womb! What his mother’s words were on discovering that she had a loquacious foetus are not recorded.

This version of the Cantata had Crozier’s words translated into Catalan by Slavador Oliva and they were performed by the combined forces of the Cor Jove de L’Escola Municipal de Música Mestre Montserrat, the Jove Cor FlumineÑ the Cor de Cambra Isquione, the Coral Bitxac and the Orquestra de Cambra del Garraf.

This imposing list of organizations was expertly and enthusiastically held together by the lively direction of Salvador Brotons who was able to meld the exciting orchestral part with expertly tutored choral forces directed by Isabel Pla.

However.

The church’s acoustic defeated all their efforts. There was at least a four or five second reverberation which reduced the detail of Britten’s orchestration to a muddy sort of aural rumble. It was like listening to a series of radios tuned to different music stations with your ears filled with marshmallow! You had to know the piece to try and extricate the instrumental lines from the mass of undifferentiated sound which filled the church.

The soloist, David Hernández, may well have been very good, but sitting at the back of the church I had no way of knowing as his voice was often lost in the wave of sound which crashed and flooded over me.

However. Part II.

I did enjoy the music, especially the second half when the more dramatic elements in this music drama were brought more to the fore. The three young sopranos walking down the nave of the church was one of those simple coup de theatre which Britten does so well in his church music and gave an indication of how marvellous this piece can be in a more sympathetic acoustic.

Another Britten trademark was the involvement of the audience/congregation in the singing of two hymns. The first of which is an old favourite and one which I must have sung hundreds of times, though not with the opening words of, “Avui la gent de tot el món ta feliç al Déu vivent el gran amor ques tots etc.” I have to say that Catalan is not pronounced as it is written, so it’s just as well that my contribution to the congregational singing was minimal!

Thanks to the kindness of Margaret and Ian I was able to stay in Sant Pere for the night and have a leisurely and delicious lunch. Five of us sat down to lunch and we had a conversation that was as wide ranging as it was divisive – though it the best possible taste!

Then off to Terrassa to see the new born.

A full life!