The new cultural season has started with the first in my series of Orchestral Concerts in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.
My first challenge is thinking about exactly when to leave. Traffic in Barcelona is usually something of a nightmare and the approach roads to the centre are usually traffic jammed so, although the journey is a relatively short one (with clear roads the trip to the city takes about twenty minutes, or thirty minutes tops the actual centre) normality is much longer. I tell myself that I will leave about an hour and a half for the 19 km journey and that I can fill in the time to the start of the concert if I arrived early by having a snack and a cup of tea.
Parking is not usually a problem. There is a car park within a few minutes’ walk of the Palau and even the parking under the cathedral is not that far away, and I have never had to look elsewhere for a parking space, except of course when there are demonstrations and all bets are off, as I venture further and further into Barcelona Unknown in an increasingly desperate search for a space outside my normal ken.
And parking spaces come at a hefty cost as I find that a normal concert length stay usually works out at about 15 euros for the privilege.
Yesterday was generally clear, with the only holdups being the traffic lights and drivers who are obviously in the centre of Barcelona for the first time and attempt manoeuvres that do not meet with the wholehearted approval of habitual Barcelona drivers.
There are always roadworks that throw logistical spanners into the car’s progress. And nowadays roadworks seem to last for months if not years before things get back to normality c.f. St Boi!
Anyway, I got to my final destination, or at least a near parking space, with plenty of time to spare and so I was able to pop into the café I use if I get a place in my car park of choice.
I had a wrap of some sort with a mixture of things, most of which I could identify, and a cup of Earl Grey tea of such insipidity that I was ashamed to drink it. I must remember to have an emergency tea bag to add to the pap they expect customers to drink so that I can fortify it with a bag of real Yorkshire Tea from my compendious stash at home.
I did make an abortive attempt to change my ticket for a concert on United Nations Day (when I have plans other than an evening concert) for a performance of Brahms Requiem tonight, but the seats available were not ones that I felt would give me a true appreciation of the work and so I decided to find something else to swap with my unusable ticket. I should discover something before next Saturday, because that is my next scheduled concert and that would be the perfect time to change things around.
The Concert itself was excellent, with a theme of Emperors and Empire. It started with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music from The Last Emperor – the Bertolucci film – and the music trod a path between a soft lilting beauty and an echo of the martial music of majesty conveying the uneasy progression from decadent tradition and the new regime of Communism.
In my view this was the weakest piece in the evening’s concert, but it was a rousing and melodic introduction.
Beethoven 5th piano concerto, usually called The Emperor was a different experience entirely. The orchestra, that I felt was a touch uneasy at the start of the evening had become much more assured and the playing of Alba Ventura spurred them to greater heights.
Her playing was precise and clear, there was a purity and a crystalline quality to her sound that almost made one believe that one was listening to the music for the first time!
Her hand movements before putting her fingers on the keys ware histrionic, but with playing such as hers she can wave about as much as she likes.
Her reception by the audience at the end of the piece was tumultuous, and rightly so, with her encore piece of Debussy’s Claire de lune showing that she was capable of a lightness of touch and a lyrical flow that was in stark contrast with the bombastic nature of the concerto!
The second part of the concert opened with Lera Auerbach’s Icarus (1973) a piece I was particularly looking forward to because of its use of the Ondes Martenot. This is one time that I actually did some homework for this piece that I did not know and listened to the performance on the artist’s website, so I was expecting the Ondes Martenot to occupy a firmer place in the soundscape that it did in performance.
The music was modern, but approachable and there were clear harmonic lines of development as well as the usual pyrotechnics that one expects from the percussion section of an orchestra performing modern music! A jolly piece.
The evening ended with The 1812 Overture, where the overriding point of interest is “How are they going to do the cannon shots?” It was fairly obvious that a big bass drum had been sited to the far left of the orchestra well away from the other members of the percussion section and, when we got to the moment of the first shot, a spotlight illuminated the enthusiastic drummer who thumped his way through the exhilarating ending.
The roar of acclimation that the piece received and I have to admit that my eyes were moist with the response to the sheer exultation of the music. And gratitude to the conductor Andrés Salado a true favourite with the audience!
Reality came back with the trip home and the usual lunatic driving of those tired of life!
