There has not been much opportunity
to review arts events of late. I am sure I don’t have to explain why. But over
the last few weeks there have been attempts to ease the restrictions of earlier
in the year and a number of venues have offered events, albeit with audiences
wearing masks and seated according to ongoing rules of social distancing. This
restricted the recent annual film festival in L’Alfas del Pi to exclude usual
venues such as the wonderfully independent Cinema Roma. The festival did happen
however, using the spaces provided by Casa Cultura and outside paved areas.
One venue where social distancing is
rarely an issue is the Klein-Schreuder sculpture garden. The current exhibition
features works by Zélia Rocha, assemblies of iron and steel, largely reimagined
engine components and re-created scrap. The forms represented are largely
literal, but the construction is utterly abstract. Part of the joy is pausing
before each work to identify what each component used to do during its working
life and then reflect on how this contrasts with its current setting. The
garden’s opening times are on its website.
And then last night, Altea hosted the
second of its series of concerts Música a Boqueta Nit, in the outdoor
auditorium at la Plaça de l’Aigua, a venue that again is easily to socially distance.
New rules, new ages, need new compound verbs, it seems.
The group Spanish Brass, a brass
quintet described by no less than Christian Lindburg as one of the best in the
world, presented its program and they played in all for about ninety minutes
without an interval. In the open air, even a brass quintet needs to be
amplified, but a group such as Spanish Brass are used to the challenge and the
sound proved more than acceptable to even the most discriminating ear.
Amplified, of course, it lacked the character of reverberation, but outdoors
there is none of that anyway.
The program was varied and, for this
outdoor summer evening, largely light, but expertly delivered. It included part
of an orchestral suite by Johan Sebastian Bach, Oblivion and Libertango by Astor
Piazzolla, and a medley of songs made famous by Edith Piaf. The last work was
apt, since on the way to the concert, it seemed that about half of the cars in
Altea had arrived from France.
Introductions to the music hereabouts
are almost always delivered in a mixture of languages, and last night Spanish Brass
chose three, English, Castellano and Valenciano, so though the French missed
out on the words, they made up lost ground in the music.
Personally, the high point of the
evening was the concerto for wind quintet by Salvador Brotons. The composer is
a teacher of brass instruments in Barcelona’s conservatory and this piece was
commissioned from him by Spanish Brass for the 2014 Alzira festival. It may not
be common knowledge outside Spain that this eastern part of the country is
known for the extent and quality of its bands. These are not the brass bands
that used to be so prevalent in the north of England before the community and
culture that spawned them was excised. These have the character of a symphonic
band, with a mix of brass and woodwinds, mouthpieces and reeds that often march
through towns accompanied by a set of timpani on wheels. The overall standard
of musicality in these groups, at least one in every town, no matter what size,
is so high that they can and often do play rich and varied material.
As a result, there exists a corpus of
composers for band throughout Catalunya and Valencia who attempt far more than
pop cliché. And so to the Brass Quintet Concerto of Salvador Brotons. The first
movement is rhythmically challenging, with its complex and broken, but always
punchy lines, a second movement that reminds of Miles Davis and Gil Evans, and
the finale that impresses via its neoclassicism and Hindemith-like astringency.
It is refreshing to hear real music
performed again. It’s ability to surprise via the new and genuinely original is
unique, and the rootedness of this new experience in everything that has gone
before has to be heard to be understood, or appreciated, in that essential order.
