I mentioned in a rather off the cuff manner a few months ago that 'there was supposed to be a chamber concert taking place in the kibbutz in another few hours' but that it was postponed because war with Iran had started that day. Finally, that chamber concert took place today and some of it was wonderful.
The concert started with a short explanation about the harp as an instrument; this one had been
built in the 1840s. The strings of a harp are tuned to a diatonic major
scale, begging the question of how sharps and flats are played. It turns out
that there are seven pedals at the bottom of the harp, where each pedal has
three positions - flat, natural and sharp. This allows all the notes to be
played, although sometimes enharmonics have to be employed, eg substituing
F# for Gb. I know that Debussy wrote 'La fille aux cheveux de lin' (the girl
with the flaxen hair) in the key of Gb which has six flats, so this must be
a rather challenging piece to play.
The first piece of music to be played was Gabriel Fauré's 'Sicilienne'
(Op. 78); the version that I am familiar with is played by cello and piano. There didn't seem to be
much difference to the version played here by violin and harp, but this is
always a good solid piece of music.
Next up was a real surprise as it wasn't in the pieces listed in the
'advert' for the concert - Debussy's 'Clair de lune' (the third part of the
Suite Bergamasque). I wonder how the harp part was written as the music is
notated in Db major with five flats. Surely it would be easier for both
instruments simply to transpose the music up a semitone to D major - this
would be a good key for the violin as well as two open strings, the D and A,
are in this key. This was pure divine magic.
I have a memory of my mother saying that 'Clair de lune' was her favourite
piece of music. Of course, I can't check with her as she passed away 24
years ago, and now it seems an odd statement for her to make as I don't have
any recollection of her ever passing comment about a piece of music. I can't
imagine any context in which she would have made this statement, either. But
it is still a beautiful piece of music and the harp makes it more celestial
than the piano does.
The other pieces on the set list were not familiar and I didn't enjoy them
as much: a piece by Tchaikovsky that I can't name (a section from a violin
concerto), Rumanian dances by Bartok, 'Fantasy for violin and harp' by Saint Saens (naturally I enjoyed this more). The final piece was
probably part of 'Rapsodie espagnole' by Ravel (I didn't know that he was of
Basque origin; I've always considered him to be French). I'm sorry to be so
vague on the titles but I don't know the pieces and I'm having to
transliteate their original names that were transliterated into Hebrew, so
it's hard to be accurate.
The concert took place in a small building that one member turned into an
art gallery. I was sitting in the second row on the left (I can recognise
the bald patch on my head if I enlarge the picture) so of course the
instruments were fairly loud, but they also had a large dynamic range as
befitting top professional players.
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This day in blog history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 171 | Heron - River of fortune | Heron | |
| 1213 | Diet | Health, Anaemia, Diet | |
| 1751 | Menaggio in the rain | Holiday, Italy, Varenna | |
| 1932 | Maeve's song | Song writing, Police procedurals |
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