Palau de la Música - Bacewicz, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt

 

After three days without a car, I was informed by the garage that they had, after extensive testing, hit a maker specific point of repair, which needed the car to go back to the dealer for the air con to be fixed.  It was impossible for them to complete the repair without the authorization of the dealer.

     This is woefully bad news as any recourse to the Dealership means big bucks at the end of the repair, and a long wait for an opportunity to spend your money as appointments are as difficult to get as if the dealership was a British doctor’s surgery!  But there appears to be little choice, and I know that the mechanic that I gave my car to will have used everything he knows to get the job done, so if he confesses to failure, then you really do have to bite the bullet and traipse all the way to the next town to get the job done.

     Meanwhile I comfort myself with the idea of a concert in the Palau tomorrow . . . which was now yesterday, if you see what I mean, a day having elapsed when blog intent did not make it to blog actual.

 

Given the tea in the café next to the parking garage that I use (if possible) which is the nearest to the Palau, is of truly awful vapidity, I resolved to take a couple of tea bags with me to augment and turn the thin earl grey into something drinkable.  I, of course, forgot the tea bags and debated whether to go to the mini market on the Via Laietana, buy some tea bags, go back to the car to store the excess, take two to the café and have a decent cuppa.  In the event I had forgotten about the mini market next to the parking so a box of PG Tips later I was able to have my tea and a more than decent brie, salmon and egg wrap, before the concert.

     A little housekeeping was necessary to change my ticket for United Nations Day into credit in the Palau as I will not be going to the opera that evening as I have other entertainment in mind!   

     That was no problem and I now have an inducement to look further afield in the range of concerts than the ones that I have purchased for some of my Saturdays with my season ticket.  Unfortunately, all the concerts in which I am interested work out to be much more expensive than the sum I have available but, that’s life – at least they gave me credit!

 

The concert opened with Bacewicz’s 1943, Overture – a short piece with some very expressive brass passages and some oddly lyrical softer passages.  I suppose it is somewhat crass to expect all music written at a time of crisis to reflect that tension in sonic terms, but even with some disconcertingly percussive moments there are also passages which are Gothically playful, but underlying all is an uneasy and sometimes frantic beat that leaves the listener edgily engaged.

     The opening of this piece sounded somewhat unsteady with the major culprits being the horn section.  The sound felt a little muffled, I am sure that the acoustic of the Palau does not favour this type of music.

     A composer worth pursuing.

 

The concerto was the 1850 Cello Concerto by Schumann adapted for viola and played by Sara Ferrández.   This was an odd experience in that the concerto is not overly assertive on the part of the solo instrument – even though it needs real virtuosity (which Ferrández certianly had) to make it work.

At the back of my mind was the fact that this was originally written for the cello, and at times it seemed to me that the viola was aping that instrument in its lower register.

     The soloist's line grew from the orchestra, and then blended with it.  Yes, there were moments when the viola soared over the orchestra, but this was a concerto where the solo instrument felt fully engaged in the totality of the music, and the depth of that engagement felt more profound than the showiness of its smaller cousin!

 

The concert really came alive in the second half.

     The first notes of the first Hungarian Dance by Brahms (orginally published over the years 1869 to 1880 and originally for piano four hands) graphically illustrated an orchestra comfortable with the lushness of sound and an ensemble playing that radiated enjoyment.

     God knows when I last listened to this music, but it all came flooding back (with the exception of Dance number 10 which was new to me) and I was able to join with the audience in giving the conclusion of the dances a tumultuous reception!

 

Symphonic Poem Number 3 from Les Préludes by Liszt (1854) was the concluding piece in the programme, a musical journey through life, death and transfiguration.

     The muted opening of the piece does not give you adequate preparation for the triumphant entry of the brass – and my recognition of the music!

     This was orchestral playing at its superlative best, and the final moments reduced me to tears.  What more can you ask from a musical experience!

 

Throughout the concert I ostentatiously consulted my Personal Listener’s Programme, produced under my direction by Chat.  I have decided to prepare for all the rest of my Operas and Orchestral Concerts by having Chat produce similar programmes which give introductions and crucially, ways of listening and further listening. 

     They also give me some space to jot down thoughts that I may have about the opening of the concert during the interval when I must move about a bit to make sure that my knees don’t set in place.

 

The next concert is a celebration of the music of John Williams, and that I expect to be a somewhat different experience.  Though I am interested to see what Chat can come up with to aid my listening pleasure!

 

 

Survival!

 

 

Our cosy meeting of the Poetry Group in Barcelona last night was rudely interrupted (ironically during the period of silent introspection before our free-write) by a chorus of alarms from our mobile phones, the local government raucously informing us that a major storm was about to break and that extra care needed to be taken and . . .  but the way that the alarms are set up is that if you press the ‘OK’ on the screen to stop the noise, it also wipes the message, so any further details are lost and you just have the memory of the noise and the brief glimpse of the apocalypse outlined in three languages.

     It is a sign of the times that one member of the group had used her past experience to explain the proper etiquette for dealing with the increasingly regular (and intrusive!) mobile phone alarms, by informing us that the proper etiquette is is lower the volume to stop the noise, and then you can read the message from the authorities at your leisure.

     It was also with a certain amount of cynicism that we now appreciate these ‘warnings’.  After various scandals where withering fingers of accusation have been levelled at various officials who did nothing or less than nothing in the face of prompt warnings, we are now at the other extreme of responsibility with any front-line authorities showing an eagerness to put warnings out as soon as possible so that the officials involved can cover themselves in the case of disaster.

     It was the first flash of over-the-top lightning (looking more like the results of an amateur junior ASM being over enthusiastic in giving a dramatic light show for Lear’s Madness on the Heath scene, than anything in so-called real life) that I realised that I had not even backed a mini umbrella into my backpack and that I would have to traipse my way to the car park under the arc de triomf in driving rain.

     In the event, at the prompt termination of the event, there was what appeared to be a lull in the storm (which had provided sometimes disturbingly apposite sound and lighting effects to the poetry being read) which I took advantage of and scurried (in so far as I am now capable of that action) off to the car park with my baston clicking an urgent clicking beat to my progress.

     The car park is one of those vast underground constructions which honeycomb the city and give vastly expensive parking spaces, because finding something on the actual above-ground streets is virtually impossible.  My problem is always getting back in at the end of the meeting after the doors have closed.

     As is usually the case, at the entrance to the car park you are provided with a ticket from the machine which gives you a printed bar code which can be read by a machine which will then open the door for you to get your car.  I, however, have a little machine in the car which is recognized and lets me through without having to take a ticket, and this is also the case when I leave, my payment is automatically and (almost) painlessly extracted from my account, as you only get the briefest digital glimpse of the astronomical amount that you have paid to stay there.

     But I can never get in because the after-hours closed doors can only be opened from the street by showing your printed barcode on the ticket that you were issued with when you came in.  A ticket that I do not have.  I have previously been told that I can punch the registration of my car into the machine manually to gain access – but the keypad only has number and not letters, so I always find myself pressing the little button next to the keypad to summon one of the workers to open the door. 

     This usually takes a few minutes, which is usually not a problem (in spite of some of the suspect characters who hang around the arc de triomf late at night) but yesterday, I was waiting outside in The Lull waiting for the rains to recommence at any moment.

     My entry was facilitated by a customer leaving and, by the time that I got to my car, I was passed by a worker on one of those little electrical vehicles usually seen in airports, making his way to where I would have been waiting if it wasn’t for the aforementioned customer.

     Almost as soon as I got out of the carpark it started raining, complete with thunder and lightning.  As the air-con in the car is not functioning, I had the windows open and, as the rain increased, closed so the car became like a sauna.  And I took a new way home, guided by the GPS, going through new streets until I came to the welcome familiarity of the Via Laietana and a well-known way back.

     Driving at night in Barcelona is a total pain as you limp your way from red traffic light to red traffic light, with the added frustration of stopping for imaginary people to cross.  Would it really hurt the municipal authorities to install a degree of AI into the lights to facilitate the smoother running of the roads?  No, perhaps I shouldn’t have added a question mark to the last sentence, as its rhetorical nature is clear!

     As I drove through the city accompanied by lashing rain and the melodramatic production of son et lumière for the end times, I eventually made it onto the motorway.

     Although I was expecting it, based on vast past experience, the quality of the driving (in rain that needed the fastest setting of the windscreen wipers to fail to clear all the water) was appalling.  Motorists did not reduce their speed; they attempted risky manoeuvres on roads covered in standing water and . . . it was just like a normal night’s bad practice with the added danger of torrential rain.

     I did reduce speed, but that merely meant that vehicles drove at my speed a few centimetres behind me until they swerved to overtake into idiot traffic that was doing the same as they were.  I would like to say that it was an invigorating experience, but it wasn’t.  It was stressfully depressing and it remains a constant wonder to me that I do not have to thread my way through a series of pile-ups on all the roads I use!

     But obviously, I made it home, and was ironically drenched in the short run from the car to the front door.   

     A small price to pay for survival!