Nothing lasts!

 

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 5^th 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!

 

Season Starts!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It says something about the state of my knees that the most productive thing to come out of my visit to La Palau de la Musica for the first Saturday afternoon concert of the season was that I have discovered (probably exorbitantly priced) parking nearer to the concert hall, and I have further discovered the lift that takes we ‘walking wounded’ to the entrance of the Platea and to my roving seat.

     As I prevaricated for months about whether or not to buy a season ticket for the concerts, I was unable to get a ‘regular’ seat.  For me, the idea seat is on the centre aisle, but as these are premium places, they go very quickly, so I will have to be more agile in my book strategy if I decide to go for a season ticket next year.

     As these Saturday ‘afternoon’ concerts actually start at 6.30 pm, it means (I hope and trust) that my driving into Barcelona will miss the evening weekend flow into the city, and I should be just early enough to get a parking space – and leave before the traffic gets, um, difficult.  Late night driving in a city like Barcelona, especially in the centre, is not usually a happy experience!

     The concert itself, was a classical blockbuster with two sure-fire favourites in the programme: Dvorak’s ‘cello concerto and The New World Symphony – but it also included a piece by

Florence Price

 

(1887-1953) a composer who, I am ashamed to admit, was unknown to me.  Before the concert started a female member of the last desk of the first violins came to centre stage and gave an enthusiastic puff for Price who was not only a(nother) neglected female composer, but also a black American.  She was the first black American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer and the first to have her work played by a major orchestra.  And I’d never heard of her.  Goes to show.

     Her music was neglected after her death, and it is only in recent years that her reputation is being re-discovered – as indeed were a stash of her unpublished scores found in her abandoned summer house!

     Her inclusion in a programme with Dvorak is apt as she was influenced by his music, especially his use of native melodies, and the Andante Moderato (her orchestrated version of a movement from her string quartet) stands comparison with the melodic mastery of Dvorak’s work.

     The string section of the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès under the direction of Andrés Salado produced a lyrical rendition that was sensitive, bordering on the reverent, so that the ‘jazzier’ sections seemed even more exotic.  Price is a composer worth looking into and there is some discography to support the attempt, as well as some YouTube and miscellaneous information on the web to make the experience worthwhile.

 

 

     The soloist in the Dvorak ‘cello concerto was Anastasia Kobekina, who while looking thoroughly modern did, in some of her impassioned playing remind me of Augustus John’s Madame Suggia – though Anastasia was not wearing such an extravagant dress!  But her playing was exceptional and committed.  I particularly liked the ‘dialogue’ between soloist and the leader of the orchestra in the final movement where there seemed to be an enjoyable and real understanding between the two of them.

     The reception that greeted the end of the concerto was tumultuous, with the audience sounding more like football game crowd than the genteel enthusiasm I am used to. 

     Perhaps this sort of programming (and relatively early start) attracts a wider group of people than usual – a large section of the audience applauded between movements, which suggests that they are not seasoned classical music concert goers - and that can only be a good thing.  In the Liceu for an Opera performance the average age of the audience (at least where I am sitting in the stalls) is even greater than my retired age!  Anything that gets young people and first timers into cultural events like this is not only a positive, but an essential aspect of allowing this form of entertainment to continue into the future.

     The soloist was brought back a few times by the strength of the applause and, to the delight of all, the soloist and the conductor

 

played a duet, with the conductor on tabor which he played with hands and fingers, sitting, and holding it between his knees.  The music was a folksy-medieval sort of piece, and it went down very well, it was cutesy and brilliant with virtuoso playing by both, and yet at the same time it was somehow intimate.

     All sections of the orchestra were outstanding in The New World Symphony that ended the concert, though I felt that when the full orchestra was playing sometimes the sound was more of a block than detailed, but that may be more to do with the acoustics of the hall than the playing of the musicians.

     For me the strings and the woodwind sections were outstanding, but the taut conducting of Salado produced a finale that was electrifying.  And if I thought that the reception of the soloist was raucous, it had absolutely nothing on the audience response at the end of the concert, with whoops, yells, whistles, and people standing to give an ovation that clearly touched conductor and performers.

    This was an exhilarating start to the season and, with the car parking sorted and the life found, I look forward with real confidence to a musical year!

 

 

 

 

Another date filled

 

Well, the one good thing is that I have only missed one meeting or appointment - and I thought that I might have missed three.  But no, blood test and concert are still in the safe future, it is only the student representative meeting that has slipped me by, and the teacher concerned seemed far more concerned about my new pressure stocking than the meeting.  The lack of my attendance at the meeting apparently could be solved, or at least mitigated, by a short chat with one of the teachers.

My pressure stockings are another factor.  These are stylish (for pressure stockings anyway) free gifts from China.  I only had to pay the postage (and that wasn’t very much) and I got three pairs!  It reminded me of the trip that Toni and I made to stay in Catalonia where the flight cost us nothing – except for the landing charges.  I do not understand the economic logic of giving away a flight for nothing, but I gratefully received the largess.  God knows we have paid back that free gift many times over given the amount of travel that we have run up over the years since.  But I do remain grateful for the inexplicable gift!

The pressure stockings are perhaps easier to explain as a sprat to catch a mackerel and the assumption must surely have been that I find out that the link with the supplier is real and you stand a chance of getting what you hoped for, and you buy much more stuff - and god knows, China is the home of stuff nowadays.  Was it enough for the Chinese supplier merely to get hold of my email and start sending me information, to get me on a mailing list, that they could write off the merchandise. 

 

And again, I insist that the postage was so small that I could afford to speculate and give it a go not really worrying about losing the pittance that they had asked to get the stuff to me.  They have since asked me to comment on my purchase, but I assume this is merely a device to ensure that I am still a live customer and that any giving of stars will unleash a whole catalogue of offers too good to miss!

Give my predilection to submit myself to the blandishments of the capitalist system and buy stuff for the mere sake of it, I have steeled myself to be rude enough not to reply – even though I am wearing one of the said stockings even as I type this.

The net two months should prove to be revealing, with the possibility that I will not need to wear the bloody stockings any more.  The function of them is to increase the blood flow in my right calf so that the thrombosis will be dissolved away.  To that end, my diet (low salt, low fat, no alcohol, decaffeinated tea and coffee) added to the half a tablet of rat poison that I take daily should all be working together to get rid of the thrombosis in a gradual way.  Over the next couple of months, I am scheduled to have various tests and appointments that should enable my doctors to determine the extent or otherwise of the offending clot and adjust my treatment accordingly.

I had thought that I would be taking the rat poison for life, but one doctor seemed surprised by this assumption on my part and assured me that there was a possibility that it would be discontinued in a few months’ time.

I continue to be impressed with my treatment and the thorough way in which I have made a Grand Tour of most of the hospitals in the area for consultations and tests.  The important ultra-sound scan will be in January, so I won’t have a Christmas present of my treatment being ended, but I will settle for a late gift!  At least by the New Year I should be in a better position to know how my appointments calendar will look for the rest of the year!

Meanwhile, my book “Stephen’s Health” continues to grow as each new sheet of information, results and appointments is added to the plastic pockets.  I take it with me whenever I go to see a doctor as a sort of visible token of my active participation in my treatment.  I can also refer to any of the information about my case (downloaded from the secure Internet link) to encourage those doctors battling with their ageing computers.  In one or two instances it has been very useful to point to relevant information to help the consultation along!

I feel fine, though I am not able to walk as far or as fast as I used to.  My shooting stick has been invaluable and I am now back to my normal swim and bike ride quota for each day.

My replacement watch for my Pebble, the Amazfit takes a dictatorial view of my activity and gives me reams of information that I totally ignore.  It tells me where I have cycled and how – though I am not sure that it realizes that my bike is electric; it analyses my swim, using acronyms that I do not know; it noted my ‘run’ that I did not do – and I am still wondering about that; it measures my sleep and its depth; it takes my heartbeat; it tells me (and nags me) about sitting down for too long.  And it also tells the time.  Its battery life is nothing near the longevity of the Pebble, but it is at least four or five days between charges and I can live with that.  The text it uses is too small for me to read without my reading glasses, but I am used to making sense of the out of focus – I have been doing in for as long as I can remember – so that is not something that worries me.

I now use my Matrix watch (the one that runs by making electricity out of the difference between your body heat and the ambient temperature of the watch case!) as a backup when the Amazfit is charging.  I good, if expensive, compromise about their use!

The major problem I have is making sure that the alarms on any and all of my pieces of wearable electronics do not go off as inopportune times.  I take my half of rat poison at 8.00 pm.  That is the time of the start of the operas to which I go.  The trouble is that merely switching off the phone (which I do when I go to performances) does not always stop the bloody alarm and once or twice I have fumbled with the phone during the applause for the conductor in a frantic effort to silence the thing before the music starts.  My watch merely trembles and that can easily be turned off by jabbing at the screen.  The anticipation that an audience feels at the start of the performance is given an added layer of fear by the threat of my electronic alarm orchestra playing an unwelcome additional melodic line.

And I am looking forward to this performance: Janacek, Katya Kabanova.  Let’s see just how well my ‘education’ in the works of Janacek by WNO and Richard Armstrong with the voice of, among others, Elizabeth Söderström, will be in my appreciation of the performance tonight.  I am all anticipation.

And now to get ready.  As a point of principle, I wear casual clothes to the Opera, in spite or rather because of the fact that I will be surrounded by those who ostentatiously dress up.  I am still wearing shorts and sandals (for me Summer Never Dies) but I might wear jeans tonight.  Not because of the cold, you understand, but rather because getting out of the Liceu and walking up the Ramblas late at night can be a dispiriting experience, and if you look ostentatiously like a tourist then you might well be the target for one or more sex workers to come up to you with blatant offers of gratification!   

Better to be taken for, if not a native, then at least a resident, and hobble (in my case) my stick-assisted way towards my expensively parked car!