From Vivaldi’s music to the night of broken glass

BARCELONA / From Vivaldi’s music to the night of broken glass

Barcelona. Palau de la Música Catalana. 20-II-2021. Symphonic in the Palau. Lina Tur Bonet, violin. Vespres d ‘Arnadí. Director and key: Dani Espasa. Works by Vivaldi.

It was a late night that began with an exceptional Lina Tur Bonet on violin (accompanied by the Vespres d’Arnadí group, under the direction of Dani Espasa), playing Vivaldi, but ended with the vandalism that caused the breakage of various stained glass windows in the exterior of the Palau. Fortunately, the most representative windows of the building were not damaged, as they were protected. But we are faced with one of the most reprehensible acts of vandalism that the architecture of the Palau – a UNESCO world heritage site since 1997 – has suffered in its more than one hundred years of history. Several hundred spectators had to take shelter inside the building until the vandals were dispersed, although there were no personal misfortunes.

But… let’s go to the exceptional music that was heard at the Palau. The name of Lina Tur is linked to the rediscovery of a new way of interpreting, reading and understanding music. His solid musicological training and his artistic talent – forged from the age of three – have allowed us to have a new look at pages as famous as some Beethoven violin sonatas can be, thanks to a deep study of the technique of the bound and of the arc blows that has been revolutionary and that deviates not only from the ‘modern’ versions of these works, but also from a good part of the historicist versions. Lina Tur has also brought us closer to Corelli’s music with a truly amazing study of ornamentation. And what about its referential version of the Sonatas of the Rosary de Biber, which has received unanimous applause internationally!

The Balearic violinist appeared this time along with fifteen string musicians from Vespres d’Arnadí, a formation that has given us so many exceptional moments throughout its more than fifteen years of history, with interpretations of Baroque and Classicism music that They are a pure delight and they honor the old Valencian sweet that the group is named after. Lina Tur gave one more twist to Vivaldi’s music, to present us one of the most interesting readings we have ever heard from the most famous Four Seasons.

The sudden contrasts; the times rapids very much in the line of Reinhard Goebel or Fabio Biondi; the ornamentation added in slow movements; the creation of new sounds always looking for the effect; the precise strokes of headband; the pianissimi Beautiful and the fiery execution permeated this Vivaldi music with a constant variety of colors. With this, the violinist and Vespres d’Arnadí managed to enhance that rhythm that on so many occasions remains unnoticed and that here made it possible to fully enjoy all of Vivaldi’s harmonic ins and outs, especially in the second movement of the Fall.

The echo effects, with careful appointees, creating a descriptive will of the sound of the birds, the inclement weather or the ethyl states produced after the harvest, were a permanent evocation in this personal way of approaching the many times heard Four Seasons. Tur looked for the effects without going into excesses, but the fieryness of his violin shone in a maximum fullness, thus providing a new colorful, vibrant, passionate point of view of the Venetian’s music.

If previously Lina Tur and Dani Espasa, on the organ, had already shown their talent in a wonderful interpretation of the Concerto for Organ in D minor RV 541, after Seasons Tur gave us the delicious second movement of the Violin concerto in “waterspout”, in which Vivaldi tried to recreate the particular tuning with third and fourth intervals typical of an instrument that was very widespread during the seventeenth century, especially in women’s monasteries in France and Austria. It was a fascinating performance, in which Tur used the bridge of the violin to create those effects and to dismiss an exceptional musical night that was somewhat marred by the disgusting acts of vandalism that followed.

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