The castle, the feast, and the ear plugs

Prelude

I am an incredibly lucky person. For various reasons.

To name a few, I am blessed with good health. A good education. A supportive and loving group of friends. Two fabulous sisters with whom I actually get along. And parents from whom us Ferrari girls inherited some invaluable traits. Nature has been good to us, bestowing more than adequate athletic abilities, a refined palate and healthy appetite, a sense of humor, two languages, and musical talent. Our parents had the good sense to nurture the latter from a very young age, and all three of us grew up studying the violin, piano, and voice.

I'm proud to say that once upon a time, me, Stephie, and Line could all sing the Queen of the Night Aria from Mozart's "The Magic Flute." Perfectly, I might add.

What I'm getting at is that my parents must have had an inkling as to how their gifts would serve us throughout our lives. Especially music. Otherwise, why would they have insisted on such an extensive musical education?

They were right, as it turns out (funny how parents have this annoying habit).

But did my father know, as he spent night after night accompanying me on Mozart violin sonatas or playing left hand to my right hand on Bach French Suites, that I would someday wind up in France where I would find an orchestra to play with? And did my mother foresee that, thanks to her insistence on my being able to attend music programs at home and abroad, I would become sufficiently accomplished on my instrument, enough to be invited to a French castle for a weekend of orchestral playing?

Probably not.

Before going on, thanks are due. So thanks, Monica and Gerardo, for making my world a bit bigger.

The castle

Pictured below.


So, I was invited to a French castle! Le Château de Goutelas. Located in the Forez province of the Loire department, the château dates back to the Renaissance. It fell into ruins until the sixties, when a good samaritan decided to lead its reconstruction. Thanks to 150,000 hours of pro bono work (farmers, construction workers, intellectuals, and artists all chipped in), the château was rebuilt in the hopes that it would serve as a place of free speech and culture. In 1966, the château welcomed Duke Ellington for a concert. A few years later, he would compose the Goutelas Suite (I tried to find a recording of this without any luck; instead, check out "Take the A Train", one of my favorites).

All in all, it's a pretty f-ing cool place.

The group I'm playing with, Ensemble Musica, is a ragtag assortment of players of different ages, levels, and backgrounds. I landed in their midst thanks to Corinne, who works with one of the violists in the orchestra (a History/Geography teacher at the Lycée Claude Fauriel). Me, Corinne, and Gemma (my Australian, violin-playing neighbor at the Facotel) have all joined.


I won't bore you with rehearsal tales. Let's just say I haven't played this much since I was 18. We rehearsed 3 hours on Friday night, 6 hours on Saturday, and another 6 on Sunday. It was intense. And probably not all that necessary since this is an amateur group (professional musicians and music students are the minority). At any rate, I can now play a mean viola part for Beethoven's 6th Symphony, and I've reconnected with my passion for classical music. I'm also toying with the idea of traveling to Switzerland this summer to stalk my old viola teacher and beg him to let me study at the Detmold Hochschule with him next year, but that's another story.

The feast

I may have omitted the fact that we slept and ate at the château all weekend. More eating than sleeping, I'm afraid. But oh, the eating! I'd forgotten how playing my arms off does wonders for my appetite, expanding it from already hearty to downright savage. We ate in the dining hall, fully equipped with a fireplace (sized approximately for roasting of wild-boar-on-spit) and long wooden tables.

An exemplary meal at the château, or Saturday's lunch -
First course: salad. Naturally. Giant bowls of lettuce and heaping plates of tomatoes, eggs, and beets (or "beet-fruit," as they say in Australia). Complemented by baskets of warm, crusty baguette.
Second course: pepper-crusted roasted pork loin with champignons in a cream sauce. And another giant bowl of overflowing ziti, prepared with butter and Emmental cheese. Plus, more baguette.
Third course: le fromage. Cheese, cheese, and more cheese. I sampled the blue cheese, but mostly stuffed my already engorged cheeks with the Saint-Félicien, a gooey cow's milk cheese.
Dessert: a yellow, custardy bread pudding with sweet prunes.

I should add that the entire meal was accompanied by a juicy Côtes du Forez. Of which I drank less than the Côtes du Rhône I've consumed while writing this post. Three-quarters of the bottle, to be precise. I think the French way of life suits me.

The ear plugs

Eating this much food can disrupt your sleep. As evidenced by our loud snoring neighbor who kept it up all freaking night long. At least it was rhythmic.

Gemma had the foresight to bring French-bought ear plugs. Which are apparently wax. All wax, all the time. They come wrapped in cotton, and after you peel away the hairy tufts, you're left with hard little balls of wax to warm and mold between your fingers before inserting them delicately into your ears. Only I have slight to moderate paranoia about inserting foreign objects into my ears, especially when they have a tendency to melt.


I lasted about 10 minutes with the wax plugs before I took them out and tried to sleep to the sound of nearby wheezing and snorting. Perhaps it was the practicing, or maybe the heavy eats, probably the wine as well, but it didn't take me long to pass out.

A Night at the Philharmonie

God, I love the orchestra.

There was a time, I remember, when this was the only future I could envision for myself. The smell of rosin, horsehair, and sweat. An A droning relentlessly while brass, woodwinds, and finally strings tune their instruments. The restrained energy when the conductor lifts his baton, bows hovering over strings, fingers tensed, trembling in anticipation, waiting, waiting for that down beat. And then, the outpouring of sound as bow meets string, breath meets reed and mouthpiece.

I think a higher power really wanted me to see the Berlin Philarmoniker during my stay here. Concert tickets are typically sold out months in advance. And yet, I managed to get my eager hands on a 20 euro ticket for a spot in the nosebleed section at the Philharmonie. Saturday October 25, 2008. Section G (left), seat 24.

The Philharmonie is renowned for its perfect acoustics. Before coming to Berlin, I'd heard that no matter where you sit inside, you can hear perfectly. If I were to go hear Shostakovitch's 11th, for example, the English horn in the last movement would sound just as ethereal in Section A (right) as it would in Section K (left).

I was excited, to put it mildly.

The concert hall itself is fully round. Audience members are seated in front, to the sides, and behind the orchestra. They literally surround the orchestra on benches and seats that are as comfortable as movie theater seats. Why shouldn't this be the case, I've often wondered? Tucking into a great piece of classical music should, like leaning back for the latest thriller or action flick, be a comfortable experience. Sinking into a rusted gold seat cushion and up against the polished wood panel seat back, I took in the view.


Not pictured is the Philharmonie's organ, off to the right, which I was ecstatic to have so close. Organs are one of my favorite architectural and musical phenomena, and I seldom enter a church without scrutinizing its organ. This one was massive and built straight into the hall. Its shiny silver pipes resembled a metallurgic cactus garden from the future.

Before the concert, orchestra patrons promenaded outside of the concert hall in the waiting area. Distinguished men and women, dressed in tailored suits and minimalist dresses, stood around high tables sipping champagne and wine out of tapered glasses. The older members of the audience smelled of rich perfume.


When I bought the ticket, I hadn't even bothered to see what they were performing. I could have cared less at that point. But leafing through the program at the concert, I was glad to see that they were performing Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, a piece that gives each section of the orchestra a chance to shine. And surprised and wowed to see that Gil Shaham was joining them to play the Elgar violin concerto. Gil Shaham, for non-classically inclined readers, is something of a celebrity in the classical violin world, a wunderkind turned acclaimed adult performer. I wasn't familiar with the Elgar, but seeing both the Berlin Phil and Shaham play was a pretty amazing coincidence.

So, how to describe the concert? The orchestra exceeded my expectations. Shaham, not so much.

Gil Shaham's sound felt thin the whole way through the Elgar, and he got excrutiatingly sharp as the piece progressed. I tend to be extremely critical of soloists (chalk it up to the influence of an ex-boyfriend who fancied himself a music critic and a painfully exigent violin teacher), so maybe I was too hard on him.

But the orchestra! Elgar writes so beautifully for strings, and the Phil's string section reveled in the lush and supple texture of the music. I know it's mixing metaphors, but hearing the strings felt like eating bar of really top-quality chocolate. The chocolate spreads everywhere, it sticks to the roof of your mouth, fills every nook and cranny with an almost unbearably rich taste. My entire body was coated by the sound, radiating everywhere from my toes to my ears to the inside of my eyes.

The Bartok was really just breathtaking. I've played it twice, once as a violinist and the second time as a violist. Both times, it was a shitshow. That piece is written to reveal where the weaknesses lie in your orchestra. If one section, or even one player falters, the entire thing will come crashing down on you. The Phil blew me away, and everyone shone (of particular note, the woodwinds in the second movement: perfect rhythm, perfect intonation, perfect unity in one of the most tortuous movements ever written).

And, upon leaving the Philharmonie, I was greeted by the cold night air and a duo of street musicians playing folk songs on the bouzouki and accordion.