It's gone quiet

Sad to be at the end of a superb piano festival.  It has been an intimate and enjoyable experience: one has the chance to bump into and chat with the performers at the market, the baker's or in the river, and it's clear that many of the performers are great friends with each other.  The last day was a treat: a terrific soprano recital by Marta Garcia Cadena and Jordi Humet in the difficult acoustic of the church.  Marta has a lovely natural voice, which a lot of us felt ideally suited to Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, which in my view works less well for a virtuoso operatic soprano.  Guillaume Sigier's afternoon piano recital was a touch mixed.  I suppose once you've listened to Ravel's Miroirs a few times the arguments will become clearer.  The Haydn and Brahms pieces were more acceptable, and the phrasing was restrained, making for a more coherent performance than some we've heard.

It was during Guillaume's recital that the problems of an open air event became clear: uncontrolled kids running around and shouting.  Mr Artistic Director had a go at shushing them, as did some of the Grandma figures of the village.  Eventually, with a muttered 'I'm not having this', I marched off to deal with them, to a murmuring, I gather, of 'there goes trouble!' from behind us.  Putting on my best dealing-with-contempt-of-court attitude, I went and collared them, quietly advising them to go home and not return, understood?  The unspoken (and of course undeliverable) 'or else' appears to have worked.

The evening recital was troubled another familiar Lagrasse factor: strong wind.  Bobby Mitchell, a virtuoso performer of Gershwin and others earlier in the week, was doing the page turning for Janneke and James (see earlier post), and his great mop of hair was all over the place.  They began with a performance of Holst's The Planets, and Janneke told me next day that they were getting really stressed when the wind kept whipping the music away.  It didn't show: it practically brought the house down - or the Halle, anyway.  In the second half, they played a few of my favourite Gershwin pieces, and finished with Debussy's La Mer, which was very well received.  I was on hat duty again, and got my best takings of the week - well over 100€.  Perhaps people were doing as I did last year and giving at the end rather than per concert, and I had fewer people proferring a tenner and asking for a fiver back. 

I think it was a mistake to make such a secret that we'd be putting the hat round.  People are free to contribute or not as they please, but an apologetic suggestion, made only at the beginning of the series, that five or ten Euros in the hat would be nice was simply not enough.  I gather that this, and the whole question of merchandising and publicity, was controversial among the organisers.  Still, the T-shirts, brooches, coasters etc sold pretty well: the logo is simple and clear.  A good decision by the En Blanc et Noir team was to publish the programme in French only, even if the original English shone through a little here and there.

I took Janneke to the airport yesterday (her husband, James, had already left for another engagement near Albi).  Some interesting insights: she told me that James's piano teacher also teaches at the girls' school where Holst taught, and just happened upon the composer's manuscript for the four-hands arrangement when he was clearing out a cupboard!  She told me she was hoping to be listed earlier in next year's programme, since it's a bit stressful keeping the big performance for the end.  I told her it was far too late for that: having finished this year's series with a blazing performance - and last year's too with the Rite of Spring - her audience looks forward to her and her man for the finale!

It all seems terribly quiet now, and I'm already missing our lovely musicians.  Still, there's to be a chamber music series in September, and we'll be here for some of it.  It is being arranged by the village organist, and I think it's a healthy competitive response to 'our' somewhat anglophone dominated series, and it's a little more hard-nosed, in that admission to concerts will be by ticket, and prices are hefty.  I don't suppose I'll see the books for either event, but dare say I'll hear on the grapevine how they compared!