Vivaldi Concert

The concert was amazingly good.  The venue was an old church (of course!) in the Acadamie section of Venice.  It looked like it had been recently re-furbished.  Beautiful statues and paintings on the walls.  But not nearly as ornate as many places (which was kind of nice).  There was cloth bafflings around some of the columns – probably to prevent too much of the sound bouncing off of the walls.

We sat about 5 rows back.  The crowd was mostly tourists and mostly Americans.  A smattering of other languages.

There were nine musicians.  A bass, a cello, a harpsichord, an oboe and the rest were violins.  The solo-ist role switched between the different violinists which was nice, too.

I don’t believe I have ever been to a concert where it was so easy to pick out the contributions of the individual performers at the same time as hearing the way they blended and made the sound whole.  You could hear the performers build a foundation and then see and hear the solo-ist float above.

We were so close that we could see them as they listened and responded to each other as well.

It is amazing the number of different ways that a violinist coaxes music out of the violin.  There is much more dexterity involved with the bow than I realized.

The oboe was beautiful, too.  The sound was haunting and plaintive.  Very emotional instrument.

I enjoyed the harpsichord particularly and it made me think of Aaron Rae.  Watching the player's hands (I could not see his face), was so interesting.  I am so glad that Aaron taught me piano.  It has changed the way I listen to music.

Truly music was meant to be heard in this way.

Vivaldi is my new favorite composer.