Florence Amici della Musica

I’m here largely for the music so I set out to book a ticket for the Zubin Mehta concert on Wednesday. He’s doing Mahler’s second symphony. This is a crazy work which is incredibly demanding of orchestral resources. What an introduction to Florence!

The lady in the booking office is very friendly. We chat for a bit then she suggests that I have a seat exactly behind the conductor’s right hand in the fourth row. It’s normally expensive but, for me, it will be 25.30 euros. I am amazed but I cannot find the exact money so she somehow takes some tax off and sells me the ticket for 23 euros. For me, this is an ideal seat.

The Teatro Communale is famous for its rotten acoustics. You have to be at the front of the stalls or at the front of the first balcony to hear anything like the real sound. For most of my Mahler performances, the wind sections dominate the strings. In the seat I have this evening, I hear the winds through a very clear string sound. I enjoy this. I’m also hearing almost the exact sound that Mehta hears and that can’t be bad.

What a crazy symphony this is. It’s not just quadruple woodwind. It has 6 double reeds, 8 clarinets, 5 bassoons, 10 horns, 8 trumpets etc. and loads of strings to attempt to balance that lot!!! Climaxes are deafening but the performance captures the quiet sections perfectly from my seat.

For me, it is a perfect welcome to the Teatro Communale and an older Mehta conducting a well-rehearsed orchestra without a score(of course!).

Then I discover that the pianist I adore is in town on Friday. I never thought I would see Martha Argerich in performance and here she is playing in a small theatre at the end of my lane!!! I know that she has completely rejected the life of a solo concert pianist but I don’t care. I have some of her great recordings and to see her in person playing in this small place will be something to remember for the rest of my life.

The Teatro della Pergola is supposedly the oldest theatre in Italy. By modern standards, it’s tiny with about 400 in the stalls plus small boxes which each have 4 seats. There’s also a gallery on the fifth level and a few extra seats on the first level above the stalls.

I buy a seat in a third level box almost over the stage. The concert is part of a series run by the ‘Amici della Musica’ which has an astonishing range of excellent performers in their programme. It’s not surprising that Andreas Schiff turns up for a large number of performances as soloist or accompanist as he lives nearby but they also have people like Murray Peraha, Yo-Yo Ma, Angela Hewitt, Sabine Meyer, Tackacs, Quartetto Guarneri, Lang Lang and others. That’s very different from my local “amici” Music Club!!

Martha Argerich is known as the ‘reclusive pianist’ as she has grown tired of the typical concert pianist routine. People forget how lonely it can be. Apparently, after she ‘gave up’ solo performances (Of course she still continued to give a limited number of appearances, thank goodness!!!), she did do a decent amount of work with orchestras. So here she is tonight performing piano duets with Lilya Zilberstein.

I share the box with a Venetian lady who is forced to stay in Florence due to family constraints. She prefers Venice but hates the new Fenice. “It’s too new!” (Incidentally, I think exactly the opposite but am too polite to disagree with her) When Martha and Lilya come on stage she is aghast, saying of Martha, “She is dressed like a housewife!!”

But the playing is fine. I love Mozart’s K608 and Busoni’s adaption isn’t bad. But Mozart’s K448 is sadly seldom heard. What a treat to hear it now! But the Schumann Op46 really gives us a chance to hear some astonishly fresh expression which I, at least, enjoy! They also do the Brahms Op56b brilliantly no-holds-barred in the second half which is obviously a hit.

We have three substantial encores; two of them four hands on one keyboard. Martha insists on playing secondo. It’s as though she has withdrawn and is pushing Lilya forward. After all this, the two of them wander around the stage like amateurs (or “housewives”?) and take deep bows now and then in response to our adulation. The ‘amici’ love them!!