Anghiari Festival

Today is a gloriously cool and sunny day in Anghiari, but it is, perforce, a day of rest, in part because a recurrent, stabbing pain in my left knee has left me immobilized for now (and quite possibly for the rest of our trip). So it is a good time to catch up on all the delightful places we've been and concerts we've heard during the past week or so.

We are right now the midst of the Anghiari Festival, a week of (mostly) glorious live classical music presented by the Southbank Sinfonia from London, a company of talented young musicians, mostly from England, but with a sprinkling of other European countries as well, fresh out of conservatory, who are touring with a superb professional chamber chorus called Vox Musica and a group of superb aspiring operatic singers from the Dutch Nation,al Academy of Opera. Starting last Saturday (July 17) with a splendid performance of Haydn's Cello Concerto and Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto on the beautiful Piazza del Popolo, we then attended on Sunday morning a choral mass at the nearby Chiesa della Propositura, which featured the marvelous Vox Musica, whose voices filled the acoustically resonant, barrel-vaulted sanctuary.

Then Monday night (July 19) we drove out of town a bit to the impressive Pieve di Santa Maria della Sovara, where the orchestra and chorus performed a flawless and memorable set of baroque masterpieces--Vivaldi's Magnificat and a rich and glorious Vivaldi concerto for many instruments (trading riffs back and forth between the tutti parts for mostly string orchestra and a solo ensemble of winds). These were interspersed first with a luminous Corelli Concerto Grosso, and then, for the finale, Handel's seldom-performed oratorio Dixit Dominus. This was, by far, the most exquisitely performed and deeply satisfying concert we have seen here, for the venue--the ancient stone-columned parish church dating from the 7th or 8th Century but renovated in the 15th Cenury--was ideally matched to the music, and the bright-eyed, enthusiastic young performers were at the top of their game.

Tuesday evening, in the nearby Piazza Mameli, we were treated to a selection of operatic arias and duets by highly gifted young sopranos and mezzos from the Dutch Academy of Opera, who brought a wonderfully dramatic range of expression--from tragic to angry to coquettish--to their flawless performances of Dvorak's Hymn to the Moon from Rusalka, the Flower Duet from Lakme, Rosina's aria from the Barber of Seville, a sprightly aria from Handel's Alcinda, and a tragic aria from La Traviata. (I am indebted to Ann for remembering these titles--I am not, myself, all that well acquainted with the operatic literature).

Wednesday evening started with a lovely chamber concert, again in Piazza Mameli, but the evening concert, in the rural Cloister Church of Carmine, was a bit of a let-down, since it featured a numbingly repetitive modern piece by Russian emigre composer Vladimir Martynov, and the acoustics were quite muddy. But things picked up again quickly on Thursday, when we were treated to a finely wrought modern violin concerto by Polish-Mexican composer Ryszard Siwy, played with serene concentration and brilliant expressiveness by his gorgeous and talented daughter Lucia. This, for me, was the apex of the week, both musically and emotionally, for after Lucia's impeccable performance, her father joined her for the standing ovation. It is rare indeed that one can witness a performance where both father and daughter have equal reason to be immensely proud of each other!

On Friday afternoon, we walked down to the foot of the hill to St. Stefano, an ancient Byzantine chapel, shaped in a Platonic circle and square, to hear yet another exquisite chamber performance of a piece for winds by Samuel Barber and Mozart's clarinet quintet. Then that night there was another orchestral concert on the outskirts of town, in the courtyard of the Castello di Sorci, where once again, one of the young violinists named Olga Muszynska, a demure young woman, ably performed a Panufnik violin concerto. The concert ended with Beethoven's second symphony, but by this time, the players were visibly exhausted--and Beethoven has no mercy on musicians!--so the performance was quite uneven.

On Saturday night, we attended a thrilling performance of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito in the Piazza di Popoli, featuring superb singers and performers from the Dutch National Opera, who used the entire square--not just the stage--in their blocking, and brought vividly to life the schemes and counter-schemes of the characters, all backed by Mozart's magnificent score.

The festival closed on Sunday, first with a superb performance of Schubert's dramatic and challenging String Quintet in the Chiesa della Badia, and then with a concert featuring a wind octet by Prokofiev. There were also a series of operatic arias on the square by the men (as opposed to the earlier recital by the women) of the Dutch National Opera, and a rather schmaltzy vocal quartet (though beautifully performed) called "Close of Day" but Sir Arthur Sullivan. The concert concluded with two delicious short pieces for string quartet by Shostakovich.

This festival, right in Anghiari where we were staying, greatly enriched what was already a glorious vacation.