Lately there haven’t been many opportunities to review art events. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why. But in recent weeks there have been attempts to ease restrictions from earlier in the year and several venues have offered events, albeit with audiences wearing masks and seated in accordance with existing social distancing rules. This restricted the recent annual film festival in L’Alfas del Pi to exclude regular venues like the wonderfully independent Cinema Roma. However, the festival was held using the spaces provided by Casa Cultura and outdoor paved areas.
One place where social distancing is rarely an issue is the Klein-Schreuder Sculpture Garden. The current exhibition features works by Zélia Rocha, iron and steel assemblages, largely reinvented engine components, and recreated scrap metal. The forms depicted are largely literal, but the construction is completely abstract. Part of the joy is pausing before each job to identify what each component used to do during its lifetime, and then reflect on how this contrasts with your current environment. The opening hours of the garden are on their website.
And then, last night, Altea hosted the second of its Música a Boqueta Nit concert series, in the open-air auditorium on Plaça de l’Aigua, a venue that is again easy to social distance. New rules, new eras, need new phrasal verbs, it seems.
The Spanish Brass group, a brass quintet rated by none other than Christian Lindburg as one of the best in the world, presented their program and played a total of about ninety minutes without a break. Outdoors, even a brass quintet needs to be amplified, but a group like Spanish Brass is used to the challenge and the sound was more than acceptable to even the most discerning ear. Amplified, of course, it lacked the reverb character, but outdoors there’s none of that anyway.
The program was varied and, for this outdoor summer night, largely light, but expertly delivered. It included part of an orchestral suite by Johan Sebastian Bach, Oblivion and Libertango by Astor Piazzolla, and a medley of songs made famous by Edith Piaf. The last job was successful, since on the way to the concert it seemed that about half of the cars in Altea had arrived from France. Introductions to the music here are almost always given in a mix of languages, and last night Spanish Brass chose three, English, Castilian and Valencian, so although the French lost their words, they made up for lost ground in the music.
Personally, the highlight of the evening was the concert for wind quintet by Salvador Brotons. The composer is a professor of brass instruments at the Barcelona conservatory and this piece was commissioned from him by Spanish Brass for the 2014 Alzira festival. It may not be common knowledge outside of Spain that this eastern part of the country is known for the sprawling and quality of its bands. These are not the brass bands that used to be so prevalent in the North of England before the community and culture that spawned them was wiped out. These have the character of a symphonic band, with a mixture of metals and woods, mouthpieces and reeds that usually parade through the towns accompanied by a set of kettledrums on wheels. The general standard of musicianship in these groups, at least one in each city, regardless of size, is so high that they can and often do play rich and varied material.
As a result, there is a body of band composers throughout Catalonia and Valencia who attempt much more than the pop cliché. And so on until the Concert for Brass Quintet by Salvador Brotons. The first movement is rhythmically challenging, with its complex and broken but always striking lines, a second movement reminiscent of Miles Davis and Gil Evans, and a finale that impresses through its neoclassicism and Hindemith-like astringency.
It’s refreshing to hear real music performed again. His ability to surprise through the new and genuinely original is unique, and the rooting of this new experience in all that has gone before has to be heard to be understood or appreciated, in that essential order.