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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Harps and harpists: pure bliss!




Yesterday evening a superb concert at my town Conservatory of Music: Maria Rosa Fogagnolo and Nazarena Recchia in a duo harp, so rare and magical concert... REALLY moving, exotic music from even more exotic instruments, rarely seen solo, imagine duo!?!... sometimes relegated to a sort of a noise, a colour for orchestra and a nuance in composers palette, like celesta or triangle... what a SHAME!!!!;-)
Haendel, Pachebel, Albeniz, Granados... all superbly played music... BUT the highlight has been Giannantonio Mutto's Five Jewish and Yiddish Songs!
Encore and encore and... audience wasn't never tired in listening to this ancient airs from the past coming from a contemporary composer who composed this haunting, beautiful piece for his harp students, as a joke... WOW!

The two so elegant, almost ethereal musicians were caressing strings and air together... when I had the opportunity, after the concert to strum an harp briefly... I understood how difficult is to tame the resonances, stopping the unused strings to freely vibrate... imagine a wild, untamed grand-piano, without pedals. Only hands, palms, fingers... a joy for the ears and for the eyes, as well, but a quite muscular instrument, indeed ... and, as a plus, now I know that the red strings are "C" and the black one are "F"... a well spent day;-)
Sound-wise... well, I've been impressed in hearing the BIG sound, lots of air moved... and again, as usually when I go to a concert, a good lesson to apply when back home in my listening room...

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