Florence Strange Concert

Today has been a strange day. There didn’t seem to be many people around until I turned down the Dante alley. That’s where Dante’s House, the Dante Church and, of course, the tripe hole in the wall coexist.

I have the impression that all Italian children have to see the Dante House. This morning, I have the impression that they have all turned up today.

After fighting my way into a quiet courtyard, I enjoyed several espressos until the nice waiter became very concerned that I had drunk too much. Having prevailed on him to bring yet another coffee he, determined to save my stomach if not my heart, plonked two large doughnuts on the table. “Gratis!”, he said with his very individual smile. As I am still alive after a good natter, he even shook my hand as I left. Maybe he thought my remaining time on this earth was severely limited by his coffee? But, of course, it could have been the fact that I took milk with my coffee? Many Italians do not believe in milk with coffee and certainly not after breakfast.

But the evening was even more peculiar. I turned up just before the concert in the Teatro Verdi and bought, as usual, a ticket in the second row of the stage box on the first level.This was surprising for a start. The acoustics of this theatre have a few defects making this box the ideal position from which to hear an orchestra, yet it was still available.

At nine o’clock, the start time for this concert, I looked around and counted only forty people in the stalls which normally accommodate over nine hundred. I saw a few more people in the boxes. The orchestra continued to tune up for the next ten minutes, giving the impression that perhaps the conductor had also forgotten about the concert. The television people, who were presumably there to record the concert, moved around in a very anxious way waiting for something to happen.

After yet another ten minutes, something did happen. The orchestra, who had been performing brilliant individual scales, arpeggios and whole concerto movements backstage, actually walked on to the stage. We all clapped madly trying to give the impression of a huge audience.The conductor appeared and asked if the few people who had turned up wouldn’t mind moving to the front so he could feel that at least a few people were appreciating his genius.

Nobody moved.

So he launched the orchestra into the four hundred metre event of music, the Overture to the ‘Marriage of Figaro’. Having had a half hour to warm up, the players were just rarin’ to go. It’s a very neat work and they played it to perfection – starting with a fast sprint – a nice balanced middle – an ending giving all they had.

The conductor Pablo Varela is a ball of energy. He starts the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto at a good nick, seemingly forgetting that the violinist Masha Diatchenko had millions of notes to play not far into the movement. But after that, things went swimmingly. In fact we forty five (I’m sure there were another five somewhere) were treated to a fabulous encore before we could stop clapping – the spiccato, rapid fire, Paganini Caprice Number Five. Wow!!!

What I really liked about Pablo Varela was the way he generated ‘forward motion’ in all the music he conducted. The music seemed to have been well rehearsed and was in fact a repeat of the concert I had failed to locate a week earlier! But nevertheless, he seemed to be very energetically pushing the music along through contrasting sections with disparate textures with a facility which made the journey through each of the pieces exciting. His body was in excited motion continually but very rarely did he lift his heels from the rostrum.

I enjoyed the Mozart immensely. The orchestra was well up to the task, and the [performance quality/audience numbers] ratio was skyhigh!!. The solos were handled with precision and clarity whilst the strings (8.8.8.4.4) played excellently also.

Varela never allowed stasis at any point in the performance, even in the slower movements. When he seemed to detect a tendency for this to happen he danced his whole body around to encourage a happy ‘forward motion’ in the music. I liked that!!!