Finding music in the old city
Tonight I enjoyed an excellent classical guitar concert at Musik Valvet (the music vault) in Gamlastan (the old city).After work, I ran through the rain on cobblestone streets through 14th-century pathways to arrive on time for the show. The venue was an old cellar underneath a pub, accessible through a long, steep, narrow stairway. It was a romantic setting underneath the city.
The program was primarily a series of 19th-century Spanish songs by Fernando Sor which were written for soprano and guitar. I never knew he wrote anything for voice, though I'm familiar with much of his solo guitar repertoire from my own studies with Michael Bracken. I listened with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised by both the music and the performance.
While sopranos normally give me a headache - no offense intended, G - the underground venue gave her voice a very wet and warmly resonant sound. The love songs and lullabies were all very good, but I have to say that Sor's accompanist parts were a bit dry and unevolved.
There were also a few solo guitar pieces, including one of my favourite pieces: Brazillian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos's Etude Number Four. It was one of the 12 Etudes he published in 1929 that were made famous years later by Andrés Segovia in one of his recordings.
I used to play that piece frequently when I lived in Vancouver and attended UBC. I remember one time in particular, when a lass named Scotia from Eureka, California was hanging out in my Totem Park residence room on a rainy afternoon. She asked me to play something sad for her because she felt homesick and didn't want to be alone in her sadness.
I played that piece for her twice, once incredibly slowly and dramatically, and then repeated it at tempo. She was crying when I was done and gave me a big hug before she left to go for a walk in the rain.
Since then, that piece has been my universal anthem for homesickness and all the feelings that go along with it.
I wasn't surprised that its melody found me underground in a medieval city 7,000 miles from home.
Or maybe I'm just being dramatic...
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