Florence Sumer Is Icumen In

Today’s funny football match in the Piazza Santa Croce signals the start of Summer for me. We’ll get Aida and the Verdi Requiem in the Boboli Gardens and a lot of other stuff planned for an even greater tourist influx hopefully expected soon. So, like many other residents of Florence, I am leaving for a place where mountains come right down to the sea and the wind can drive you mad.

But I should mention a few of the goings on here. The first curiosity was a tracker recital by Ingo Duwensee including, for me, some very strange pieces by North German organists such as Bruhns(1665-1697 Didn’t live long did he!!), Scheidemann(1596-1663), Homilius(1714-1785), de Heredia(1561-1627) and ending thankfully with some Bach(1685-1750!!). The Bach was received well by the audience especially the brilliant Bach encores.

A couple of days later, I managed to hear some Bach Chorale Preludes on the chamber organ in Orsanmichelle. The sound was beautiful and perfectly matched the music. The acoustics are extremely resonant in Orsanmichelle but the registration used on this small organ, with plenty of grunt for this type of music, came over fairly clearly. Unfortunately, this could not be said for the rest of the concert for which the organist was the accompanist.

A few nights ago I went to my last ‘invitation concert’ at the auditorium hall near the Duomo. I have been turning up regularly for these concerts for three months now and have had to beg to be let in each time. The ushers see me coming now and the head one simply says. “Let him in!” I never made the actual invitation list.

This last invitation was given by a vocal quintet whom I have previously heard singing medieval music. They look like bankers and sing in a very mannered way. A feature of these invitation concerts is that, not only are there heaps of speeches before the concert but, like the formula one races or tennis matches, they have a sort of interview afterwards when the MC asks, “How did it go?” type of questions. The rather extreme mannerisms, which I found a little “over the top”, were explained as ‘affeti’ which were important to express during the period in which most of the programme material was written.

But last week was a real treat. I have never seen so many people battling for standing room as I saw for last week’s invitation concert. I managed to squeeze past the waiting hordes and receive my customary, “Let him in!” so I managed to get a seat. Why was this? It was simply because it was an all – Bach organ recital by the biggest organ (and other genres of music) celebrity in Europe.

The organist was Ton Koopman. I know nothing about organists but this chap is now my favourite. He really “swings” the music. You can see his whole body attacking the pedals and keyboard in the same way as Mehta demands more tone from his orchestra. He seems to approach the organ rather like an orchestra and tease rhythm and expression from it with everything he has!! This recital was extremely popular and everybody was simply carried away by Koopman’s enthusiastic playing on this wonderful huge tracker organ. Wonderful!!!!! Ton Koopman seems to enjoy his popularity and his playing. After each of his encores, he walked around the hall beaning at the pleasure which we all evidently took from his playing. A happy man!!!

There are a few more music events this weekend but it’s festival time and I’m off out of town for the Summer!!