Last month, a beautiful place on the outskirts of the town of Altea offered shelter to a nice event. It is an old villa, Villa Gadea, built at the end of the nineteenth century that with its beauty became one of the emblematic buildings of this coastal town in Spain. It was the property of Vicente Gadea and his family. Though he lived in Valencia, his hometown Altea remained in his heart, hence, building a house for spending the holidays was the most natural thing to do.
Thanks to him, now this place is a meeting point for various cultural events. Apart from the beauty of the building itself, it is a privileged space in every way. Located just on the top of a cliff from where you can enjoy the view of the bay. However, that day we were not there to enjoy the sun, sea and that view. We went to receive some musical vibes.
When we arrived, it was still daytime, but the sun was already in preparation mode to sleep and dream. The young musicians were not in the mood to sleep though. I personally very well know one of these young men, so I approached the string ensemble and their teachers while they were still chatting around the fence, looking towards the sea.
MP: Hi guys, how are you? Nervous?
Musicians: No, we are all fine here.
That was good to hear, sometimes we moms are nervous and excited when our kids have a performance (oops, I just revealed my relationship with that one violinist... {lol}). I am a musician too, you all know, so I do expect a good level and I hear every single thing that should be improved. However, in a concert, I shuold just sit back and enjoy. Forget my profession and just once be the audience without any analytical approach. Will I ever achieve that?
Well, I think I did, as when the concert started, the very first notes made me feel... weak. Oh no, in one of the corners of my eye, I felt the presence of tears. To be honest, I was not weak, I was proud. But let's leave it as a secret.
All was prepared in the scene for the concert. As you can see from the previous photos, the seats were just those white plastic chairs that were moved from one to another concert in the mini-series of the concerts held during the week before Easter. On one side of Villa Gadea, there is a small chapel, well it is part of the same building. The space inside could not receive more than a few musicians, so clearly, the listeners were outside, in the garden. There were speakers all around, basically, you could take a seat anywhere and enjoy the same sound.
However, I wanted to see them also. I tried to find a place as close as possible, but again, the others were quicker in coming to the event and finding themselves a good position. It was not a bad one that I found in the end, so also the last composition will come in the video as I made a recording on that one.
The ensemble performed several pieces. We could hear compositions by Schubert, Dvorak, Godard, Dmitriev, Mahler, Schnittke and the last one, to close calmly the concert, a piece by Schumann.
It is Träumerei (Dreaming) from a set of thirteen pieces of music, Scenes from Childhood Op. 15, originally written for piano in 1838. I started to record a few seconds later, so what we hear in the beginning is not the very first measure. I should also say that there are some birds that can be heard in the recording. Do you hear them too? After all, we were sitting in that garden part, with trees around and the birds also came to give a small serenade, accompanied by these musicians.
Ladies and gentlemen, Scherzo Strings preparing to perform the composition Dreaming, by Robert Schumann... I hope you enjoy and dream with the sounds of it :))
If you have enjoyed this post and you have recently visited a concert (as a listener or performer), regardless of musical genre, and you want to share with us the story of it, you are very welcome to use this Q-inspired corner for that contribution!
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