Dogs barking; old crumbly buildings, dusty roads; lush green rice fields: this is the Mediterranean I was born to. And this is the Mediterranean I visited on the last concert in Catalunya of the Escolania de Montserrat at the town of L'Aldea.
The small church of La Ermita at L'Aldea was a whitewashed buildings with an adjacent hostel. And instead of having a cloister to its side, there was a bullring. A true testament to the strong tradition of bull “corridas” which is as deep-rooted into the church life as it is to celebrate Mass. The church itself has a typically Mediterranean feel to it: small interior, very golden altar and backdrop, and plaster-covered walls in quite odd colours, in this case purple, orange, light green... But it reminded me a lot of the church we used to go to back in the days of living in Valencia.
I seem to have had a very unlucky camera throughout my time at Montserrat: I have always wanted to film the choir singing the famous and beautiful Nigra Sum by Pau Casals, yet for some reason I have either left the camera back at Montserrat, not had memory enough for the recording or simply run out of memory during filming it. I admit this is partly my own fault, but I came here determined to have an empty camera with a full battery. So I finally managed to film it!
As this was the last concert in Catalunya, the boys were determined to give it their full energy. And it certainly stuck in everyone's head, with many people saying it was their best concert so far this year. The soloists performed brilliantly and the sound echoed around the church like it had never done before. Obviously, the acoustics were much better than for example at the Auditorium at Ripollet, which in comparison sounded quite dry. 
There was a tower next to the buildings which looked quite odd: we later found out that it was part of one of many fortresses lined along the delta of the Ebro river, the second longest river in the Peninsula and by far the one with a largest current, and which irrigates a large section of the surrounding countryside (hence all the watery rice fields around the buildings). The tower was the only section remaining, but thtere were also some ruins by its side, some of which dated back to Roman times. It shows just how important this river was that even in Roman times there were already structures which acted as watchtowers against invaders or pirates.
Memories of the day are quite vague. I blame this on the extremely hot and stuffy weather which is typical around this time of year along the coast. It normally results in very sudden but plentiful downpours (I remember various times in Valencia when we were caught in these downpours). However, all in all it was a great day. Seeing the rice fields again was probably the most memorable event of the day. But like always, the choir sweated their way through the concert and gave another spotless and pitch-perfect performance!
No comments:
Post a Comment