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CSYO trip to Italy, 23rd July - 1st August
The City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra was asked to be a representative of the United Kingdom at the 2nd International festival of Youth Orchestras in Italy. We played four concerts in Lerici, Perugia, Spoleto and in Florence, staying both in the spa town of Montecatini and just outside Perugia. We played Excelsior!, by Stenhammar, Concert Music for Brass and Strings by Hindemith, and Beethoven's Symphony no. 6, the 'pastoral' symphony. On the whole, we found Italy to be a beautiful country with an impressive cultural history, but perhaps its beauty was more easy to appreciate in the quieter towns such as Spoleto or Montecatini than in Florence, which although bursting with culture was constantly resounding to the sound of cameras and chattering tourists.
Lerici
The setting for our first concert was by the Gulf of Lerici, known as the 'Poet's Gulf', having been home to Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, D. H. Lawrence, and numerous French and Italian authors and poets. Mary Shelley said of Lerici that 'The gales and squalls that hailed our first arrival surrounded the bay with foam. The howling winds swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly . . . the natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbours of San Terenzo were more like savages than any people I ever before lived among'. It seems things have changed somewhat in the last century, as we found a placid and sparkling blue gulf to play beside, friendly and very receptive locals, and it was only the jellyfish that proved hostile. Playing outside is often difficult, even without half the orchestra having fallen victim to the local sealife, and here the sound was often whipped away by the waves of the enormous gulf. This in itself would have been troublesome enough, even without having to compete with the sounds of a nearby barrel-organ, or the conductor throwing his baton at the violas halfway through the Beethoven, or the lead cellist's bow ending up somewhere near Row Z. Nevertheless, the audience appeared to enjoy it; maybe the barrel-organ added a certain something to our playing of the Hindemith.
Perugia
The Basilica di San Lorenzo in Perugia is very beautiful, very big, and very boomy. In fact it was so resounding that we were constantly under the impression that there was another orchestra at the other end of the cathedral playing exactly the same pieces, only five seconds later. This was just one of the many churches and cathedrals that we visited during our stay. The Duomo in Florence was probably the most famous, Siena cathedral was probably the one that looked most like a liquorice allsort, and Lucca was so awash with grand churches it proved hard to tell exactly which one was the real cathedral. All were superbly decorated, with amazing frescoes and stained glass windows, and those parts of the marble floor that were uncovered in Siena cathedral were particularly beautiful. Florence, in particular, is a city which contains works of art wherever you turn, ranging from Botticelli's Birth of Venus, hanging in the Uffizi Gallery, to Michelangelo's statue of David, which is omnipresent in the tourist shops on anything from postcards to aprons.
Spoleto
The Piazza Duomo in Spoleto was the venue for our second outside concert. The walls of the square and the cathedral itself meant that the acoustic was easier to play in than it had been in Lerici, but the wind was not so lenient, forcing us to play among a forest of clothes pegs. In spite of the wind, there is something about playing in Italy that lends an edge to the music. Ours were three very different pieces, but they all seemed to gain a certain relevance in their setting. The Stenhammar's sweeping strings and romantic melodies lent itself well to being played in a country with such a passionate history, and the rolling hills of Umbria were a perfect arena for Beethoven's musical description of the countryside. The dissonance of the Hindemith seemed at first to be a challenge to the historical culture of Italy. However, in a cathedral such as in Perugia, or in the Palazzo Vecchio where we played in Florence, the movement of the strings was accompanied by a rich and resounding brass sound which created a magnificent and detailed grandiosity. You felt that these were the settings where any kind of music can be truly appreciated.
Florence
Our final concert was in the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, surrounded by the frescoes of Giorgio Vasari and the statues of Michelangelo. This was probably our best concert, with a wonderfully receptive audience. Many people had to be turned away at the doors, but those who were there were most appreciative, as they were at all the concerts. It was a good concert with which to end the tour, and it was gratifying to read a congratulatory note on the CSYO website from a Dutch student who had been in the audience. Our experience of Italy had been one of ice cream, pizza, sunshine, funicular railways, swimming pools, tractors and mildly aggressive animals, as well as the music and the culture, and was not one to forget in a hurry. |
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